


The Hunt

by writingfromdarkplaces



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), Longmire (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Background Relationships, Crossover, F/M, Gen, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-07-28 15:33:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7646758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingfromdarkplaces/pseuds/writingfromdarkplaces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A federal agent arouses Walt's suspicion when he comes to town seeking a serial killer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. New in Town

**Author's Note:**

> Occasionally, seeing actors in alternate roles inspires fic. That would be part of the case here, since the same person played Kara and Vic. It's not all of it, because part of it was watching season two and going, "wow, Dee is straight up stalking Apollo and it's creepy" which led to wanting to do an AU where Lee and Kara bond over their respective stalkers (Dee and Leoben) and where Lee was a cop. That led me back to Longmire since Vic also is stalked, and thus a new monster was born.
> 
> There's a whole explanation for the name thing that doesn't fit in chapter one, though I will acknowledge the Caprica reference, and yes, the choice of NCIS was made because Jamie Bamber was also on that show.

* * *

“Visitor for you, Walt.”

Longmire looked up from his desk at Ruby's words, and she nodded toward a man now walking through his office door. He gave her a slight smile before turning back to Walt. His eyes were keen, but they gave too much away all the same. Something under them simmered, a haunted expression that Longmire knew well from his own mirror.

“Sheriff Longmire,” the man said, holding out a hand. Walt ignored it, and the other man let it pass, letting his hand fall back near his suit. “I'm Joe Adams with NCIS.”

Federal agent disagreed with the read Walt had on him so far, even with the suit. The man didn't carry himself like a fed. Then again, he was a military fed, and Walt did get military from him. It was in the way he stood. “Long way from a port there, sailor.”

Adams seemed amused. “I am, but we don't only deal with Navy crimes. I came by as a courtesy, to let you know I was going to be in the area. I'm looking for a man named Leoben Conoy. He's suspected in the death of at least four women in the last ten years.”

Longmire watched him. He didn't like the sound of this, and he didn't like being left out of the loop. “This is the first I've heard of a suspected serial killer in my county.”

“It's an unconfirmed report so far,” Adams told him. “I don't have proof he's here, or you can bet I wouldn't be on my own, sir.”

There it was. Adams was definitely former military. Walt would have bet on it, but now he didn't have to. “What makes you think this... Conoy of yours is here?”

“Anonymous tip.”

“Convenient.”

Adams snorted. “Not particularly, but you already know that. Calls have to be filtered through, many of them are dead ends and cranks, but a few are genuine. Most of the time we don't have time to investigate them.”

“But you made time for this one?”

“He has a pattern. A cycle. All this has happened before. It will all happen again,” Adams shook his head. “He's getting close to the start of a new cycle. It's time. He will go after another woman. He has been off the grid for so long a crank call seems more like DNA proof. I'm willing to spend time on it if it means stopping him from doing this again.”

Walt nodded. He might do the same. Still, something about Adams was off, and he knew it. “You know where he is?”

“He was supposedly seen at the local truck stop. I haven't gone there yet to show his picture around or ask for the surveillance videos, though I'm not sure they'll still have them by now. Many places erase them and—”

“You got a picture of Conoy?”

Adams nodded, taking a paper out of his pocket and passing it to Walt. “You haven't seen him by any chance?”

Walt shook his head. Still, even without having seen him, he had a bad feeling about the man in this picture. He looked... soulless. Inhuman.

* * *

“You're early,” Henry observed.

Walt nodded, leaning against the bar. “Wanted to ask you about this man. Need to know if you've seen him around the Red Pony or anywhere else.”

Henry picked up the paper and studied it with a frown. He did not know all the faces that passed through his bar, but this one would have been difficult to miss. “No, I have not, and I am glad to say it. Who is he?”

“According to the NCIS agent that came by my office, he's killed at least four women and is likely to kill a fifth soon,” Walt answered. Henry looked back at the picture. He could see that in this one. “He may be here. A source spotted him at a local truck stop.”

Henry looked at his friend. “You say that as if you doubt it.”

Walt grunted. “Adams isn't telling me everything. I know that. What I don't know is if it's just typical federal behavior or if he's hiding something himself. Ruby's digging up his file for me now, but I want you to keep an eye out, let me know if you see either of them.”

“It would help if I knew what Adams looked like.”

“I'll get his picture to you when I get the file from Ruby.”

“There is more to this than these men you came here to warn me about,” Henry said. “Something is bothering you. Is it that Vic is on vacation or something to do with Cady? You do not know that this killer is here.”

“No, I don't, but I'd feel a damned sight better if Vic was already back from vacation and Cady was somewhere I knew she was safe.”

“I could give her a job here,” Henry offered, and Walt gave him a look before walking away. Henry smiled and started wiping down the bar.

* * *

“Hey, Henry,” Cady said as she leaned against the bar. He smiled back at her, covering the phone, and she waited, knowing that he would get her a drink as soon as he was finished. She looked around the room, taking in all the familiar ambiance. This place was like another home, and she felt comfortable here.

The man on the stool next to her did not, not by any means. His eyes were on his drink, his hands on the glass as he hunched over it.

“You know, I don't think it bites.”

“The whiskey or the thing over there mounted on the wall?” he asked, managing a small smile before he turned to her.

She laughed, picking up the drink Henry set in front of her. “Deer are herbivores, you know that, don't you?”

He nodded. “I do. I just find mounted heads creepy. It's like they're watching us. Maybe even plotting revenge.”

“How many of these have you had?” Cady asked, gesturing to his drink.

“Not nearly enough,” he answered, blinking clear blue eyes at her. He picked up his drink, turning it and watching the liquid slosh from side to side. “It looks fake, don't you think? Feels a little fake, too.”

“Henry doesn't water down his booze, if that's what you're implying.”

“I'm not. I'm just... cursed with too high a tolerance, I guess,” he said, putting the glass back on the bar. “Sorry. I'm being rude.”

“Is that what you're doing?” Cady teased. “I half-thought you were too drunk to remember your name, let alone tell me what it was.”

“You weren't too drunk to offer yours.”

She had to give him that one. “Cady Longmire.”

“Joe Adams.” He didn't offer her a hand to shake. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Henry react to the name, but she didn't know why. “That make you Sheriff Longmire's daughter?”

“It does,” she said. “Not sure what it makes you, though.”

He laughed. “I don't think there's anything much to make of me. I'm just passing through. If I'm lucky, I'll be gone before the intervention happens.”

“What intervention?”

He grimaced. “My father, his best friend, and my step-mother decided that they were going to join me for a 'family' vacation. Seeing as how we have never in my entire life been a family, it's not hard to see past that lie. I... I don't actually know why I'm telling you this.”

“You don't? Because I kind of figured you were looking to get in my pants.”

He gave her another half-smile. “In case you missed it, I'm damaged goods. But I'm flattered you'd consider me.”

“Hey, I said you were considering me, not the other way around.”

“You keep telling yourself that,” he said, and she laughed. Henry gave her a look, but she shrugged. She didn't see any reason not to talk to Adams, even if whatever was bothering Henry came from her father.

“I'd rather talk about you. What do you do?”

“Hmm. Lawyer. Fighter pilot. Special Agent.”

“Am I supposed to guess which one of those is true?” Cady asked. She shook her head. “I can make it easy on you. _Brown vs. Board of Education.”_

“Segregation? Why not pick _Roe vs. Wade?_ Everyone knows that one, too.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine. _Mapp vs. Ohio.”_

“Is that supposed to test the lawyer or the special agent?” he asked. He picked up his glass again. “Here's to illegal search and seizure.”

She shook her head. “You really _are_ drunk.”

* * *

“If you're looking for your daughter, she's not here,” Adams said when he opened the door to his hotel room.

Walt shook his head. “I'd watch what you're saying.”

“I was making it clear that I didn't do anything to your daughter,” Adams told him, leaning against the door frame. “She's nice. I haven't had a conversation like that since... Well, it's been a while, but nothing happened. I left her at the bar. And I took a cab back here. You've got nothing on me.”

“Except an unofficial investigation.”

Adams sighed. “I suppose you could throw me out of town if you want. I don't actually have jurisdiction right now.”

“No, according to your superiors you're on leave. The sense I got was that it wasn't a short-term thing, either.”

“Forced medical leave,” Adams agreed. “Though not for the reason you're probably thinking. Bullet tore up my shoulder and rehab didn't go the way they wanted it to.”

“So you just decided to take a vacation in my county.” Walt held up a hand. “Don't bother spinning the anonymous tip line again. I didn't believe you the first time, and I still don't. You know more than you're saying.”

Adams moved away from the door, gesturing to the bed. A file was spread across it, papers and pictures taking over the entire bedspread. “Those are three of Leoben's victims. He... He is obsessed with a woman named 'Starbuck.'”

“Starbuck,” Walt repeated, picking up one of the photos. He frowned as he studied it. “All the women look like her?”

“No. He seems to pick them more on personality. That's what they all have in common. There is some physical resemblance, too, but it's not as much about that as it is how they act. The way their friends and families describe them... it could be word for word the same.”

Digesting that, Walt moved on to other pictures. “I don't see one uniform in this whole lot.”

“Second victim was a reservist,” Adams said. “The first was a pilot. They... never found her body. That's why there's no pictures. Just a strong suspicion that she ties to all of this. I'm not that far out of my bounds. There is a reason why NCIS would be involved. Technically it should be a joint investigation with the FBI.”

“But?”

“All four cases are cold. No one's seen Leoben in years. They think he's dead. This case isn't a priority to them.”

Walt knew it was personal for Adams. That was already clear. “You call him Leoben. Not Conoy. Did you know him?”

Adams hesitated. “You... could say we have a history.”

“Could I also say he's the one that put the bullet in you?”

“No. Though you're right. He did try to kill me. More than once.” Adams shook his head. “You're welcome to think that I'm biased. That I'm too close to it. Everyone does. But if I'm right, and Leoben is about to take another woman... I'll never forgive myself for not doing everything I can to stop him.”

Walt couldn't argue with that. He'd make the same choice himself. “You haven't said what led you here.”

“Yes, I did,” Adams said. “You might not believe that, and you don't have to, but I've said all I'm going to.”

* * *

After he closed the door behind Longmire, Lee went over and shut the curtains. Now alone, he felt the weight pressing in against him again. He wasn't sure he could do this. It wasn't just that the sheriff was more competent than Lee had hoped and already halfway through unraveling the half-truths he used to survive these days or that his father and the others were already on their way to try and stop him from self-destructing again.

No, he was drowning again, and if he wasn't careful, he wouldn't surface before it was too late.

Lee went to his bag and took out the other folder, the one he wouldn't show Longmire. Opening it up, he tried to prepare himself, but it never worked. He wanted to be wrong about this. He did. Not that he wouldn't give anything to find and stop Leoben for good, but those pictures... They had to be fake. No one looked _that_ much like Kara. The resemblance was painful, a kick to the gut every damned time, but he knew it was there. 

If he'd seen it, if he felt like this about it, then he knew Leoben did, too. He'd never let someone that looked so much like Kara go free.

Leoben would go after Vic Moretti. He might already have her.

Lee had to stop him. No matter what it took.


	2. Drinks, Names, and Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lee's family arrives and complicates things for him with Longmire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have to admit, the bartender dynamic wanted to derail the whole thing. I swear I just wanted to write a piece where Roslin explains not only their inside joke but the name thing and Lee's past and all of it over drinks with Henry. *shrugs*
> 
> I won't deny some of that might still happen. I did work in a partial explanation for the name, but other things have yet to come.
> 
> And I kept the colonials using frak even though this is AU because it just sounds wrong when they don't.

* * *

“I don't see him.”

“Relax, Bill,” Laura said, putting her hand on his arm. “He'll be here.”

Bill grunted. He wasn't as convinced of that as she was. For all that she should have had plenty of trouble with Lee since she was his stepmother, Laura had always gotten along better with his son than he did. Her relationship with him was almost effortless, and while Lee carried around plenty of resentment toward Bill, he'd never felt that toward Laura, even when she “replaced” his mother. It helped, Bill supposed, that Lee had been grown at the time—she might have had a harder time if she'd been there when Lee was still young and angry.

Lee had mellowed some when he grew older—not much, not that Bill would have expected it—but military discipline had been good for him, and their shared love of flying gave them some common ground again, but Laura still had the better relationship with him.

“What can I get for you?” The bartender asked, and Bill gave him a dark look.

“Nothing,” Bill snapped. He didn't want to be chatted up, and he wasn't going to drink. Coming into the bar was Laura's idea, and it wasn't like he didn't know why. Lee could be following in his mother's footsteps, and even if he wasn't, they'd be more likely to find Saul here. 

“Whiskey, neat, for him,” Laura corrected, giving a smile to the bartender. “And I would like the biggest, most ridiculously girly drink I can get here—something fruity and very sweet.”

“Laura,” Bill said in warning. She did not want to do this, and she wasn't the sort for the drink she'd just ordered. He turned back to the bartender. “Cancel her order. We don't need a damned thing.”

She shook her head, giving him a warning look of her own before facing the bartender again. “Bring us what I ordered and ignore him. Bill is just worried about his son, and it makes him grumpy.”

“We don't even know that Lee will be here,” Bill told her. “Knowing him, he lied to us about where he was going and let us come on a frakking wild goose chase so he can do whatever he damn well pleases to hell with the consequences.”

Laura smiled, softening his words with, “Lee has always had a bit of a stubborn streak. I'm told it goes all the way back to his childhood and a refusal to be known as 'Junior,' preferring a nickname or even his grandfather's to the one he was given at birth.”

Bill grunted. “It was his mother's idea to name him after me. Not that he didn't make me pay for it every day of my life afterward.”

“That is perhaps why I have never had children,” the bartender said, smiling. Laura smiled right back at him.

“I was never fortunate enough to have my own, though I am quite blessed as a stepmother, regardless of what Bill may think.” Laura accepted her drink from the bartender and stirred it before taking a sip. “This is excellent. Thank you.”

Bill considered picking up his own drink, but he was distracted by the bar door opening and Saul stumbling inside. Damn. He must have talked to Ellen. Bill knew of no other reason why his friend would have gone this far this early. Saul had his problems, but he never drank and drove unless Ellen was involved.

“Oh, no,” Laura whispered, rising. “Saul, it's good to see you.”

“What the hell's good about it?” Tigh demanded, making his way over to the bar. “Whiskey. Double. And keep 'em coming.”

The bartender gave him a look.

“He's one of Bill's oldest friends,” Laura told him. “We'll watch over him. Promise.”

The bartender gave her a nod and filled Saul's order.

* * *

Vic slammed the door to her truck closed and considered kicking it for good measure. This was perfect. Just _perfect._ This made her week complete. Her vacation was ruined. Her husband was pissed off at her again—not that it was anything new—and now her truck wasn't working.

“You wreck that one, you won't get another. It's not in the budget.”

She shook her head even as she turned around with a smile. Facing Walt, she leaned against the truck and almost smiled. “Since when do you care about the budget?”

“I don't, but Branch made such an issue about it during the campaign I thought it might be worth mentioning,” Walt said, and she rolled her eyes. Like he thought anything Branch said was worth mentioning. “What are you doing here, Vic?”

“What do you mean?”

“Seems to me you were on vacation. You're not due back for another three days.”

“Yeah, well, that didn't exactly go as planned,” Vic told him. He gave her a look, and she shrugged. She didn't want to tell him about it. What was she supposed to say? My husband's a jealous dick and he blew things out of proportion, and suddenly one flat tire became a reason not only to end our trip but apparently our marriage, too? 

_“What the hell was that, Vic?”_

_She frowned. “What do you mean, what was that? Some guy came up and offered to help with the flat tire, which is more than I can say for you.”_

_“Excuse me?”_

_“Look, I don't know what your problem is, but I just had some creep start going off on streams while I was trying to change a tire. He helped, so I had to thank him, but that was it. I don't know what you thought I did or what you think you saw or heard, but that's all it was. So you know what? Screw this. I'm going home.”_

_Sean didn't say anything as she walked away from him._

Vic shook that off as she faced Walt, surprised by what she saw on his face. “Wait a minute. Why are you looking relieved?”

“I'm not relieved.”

She snorted. Walt wasn't an obvious man, didn't show a lot of emotion, but she knew relief when she saw it. “Sure you're not. What did I miss?”

“Got a federal agent in town.”

“Sounds like fun.” Vic watched him, waiting for his reaction. Okay, not good. Whatever was bothering him had him more rattled than he would say or show. “How many people died?”

“Four so far. Adams thinks he's gearing up to go after a fifth.”

“Adams, huh? Why do I get the feeling that you and Adams don't get along?”

Walt smiled. “Because you've never known me to get along with a fed in my life.”

She shrugged. “There is that. But it's more than that, isn't it?”

“Adams is hiding something. He admitted a few things, but he's still holding back, and I'll be damned if I know what it is.”

“Personal or professional?”

“Maybe both.”

She nodded, taking that in. “What are you planning on doing?”

“I need more information,” Walt said. “Adams knows more than he's saying, and if this killer really is here, I want him found. And I want to know why.”

“Durant Wyoming isn't exactly a tourist destination,” Vic agreed. “You think Adams is lying? Why would a serial killer pick here as his hunting ground?”

“Wouldn't be the first time that someone might pick their victim because of a jurisdictional nightmare. If he kills someone on the reservation, our hands would be tied, but that doesn't mean that he's here for that. From what Adams says, this guy picks his victims based on personality. They all remind him of one woman, and they die for it.”

She wondered when any of them would start getting overprotective of her because she was a woman. “You want me to talk to Adams?”

“I might have Cady do it.”

“Cady?”

“She and Adams hit it off, apparently.”

“Oh, and I bet you're loving that,” Vic teased. Walt wasn't happy, that was for sure, and she'd love to tease him more about it, but she didn't think she'd have a chance now.

“Ruby should have dug up the files by now,” Walt said. “Let's see what she's got for us.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

* * *

“And another one for this miserable son-of-a-bitch,” the drunk said, clapping his friend on the back and gesturing to Henry. He sighed. Clearly, he needed to be cut off and escorted out, but his friends were unwilling to do so. He could see that neither of them were comfortable with his behavior, but they were not intervening. That meant it was time for Henry to step in. “To Bill Adama. May retirement have mercy on your soul.”

“I do not think it has had any on yours,” Adama observed. “I think it's time to give it up, Saul.”

“Figures that son of yours isn't coming. Ungrateful little pissant.”

“Saul,” the woman began, reaching over to place her hand on his arm. “It's not Lee you're mad at, and as difficult as it may be for us to do, we have to step back and allow him to grieve in his own way.”

“Like you didn't come up here because you thought he was actually going to go through with it this time. That he didn't pick this backwater town in the middle of frakking nowhere to eat his own gun.”

Adama grimaced. “That's not why we're here.”

The other man snorted, turning back to his drink. Henry was called to the other end of the bar, and by the time he returned to the strange trio, the loud drunk had gone quiet, and the other two had finished their drinks.

“I see someone started early,” a fourth party said, coming up to the three of them. The drunk didn't acknowledge him, but Adama watched him warily. The woman, though, she smiled.

“Lee,” she said, getting off her stool and going to hug him. “It's good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too, Madame President,” Adams said, and she laughed in his arms.

“Where have you been?” Adama demanded.

“It never fails,” Adams said, pulling away from the woman and facing Adama. “You couldn't wait two minutes, could you? Not even a damned hello. And people wonder why we never talk.”

“Don't start,” she said. “And that goes for both of you. There's no reason we can't keep this civil. What you're mistaking for accusation is your father worrying about you and not being willing to admit it. And Bill, for once in your life, just admit you're glad to see your son.”

“You like to make fools of us all,” Adama said, but he smiled at her before pulling Adams into his arms and hugging him close.

Henry walked to the other end of the bar and picked up his phone, dialing a familiar number. “You said you thought Adams was concealing something from you.”

“Yeah,” Walt agreed. “You have some idea what that is?”

“Well, for starters,” Henry said, “his name isn't Adams.”

* * *

“At the risk of starting another argument,” Laura began, reclaiming her stool and trying a bright smile on her stepson. “I would like to know where you've been.”

“Are you asking as my stepmother or are you fishing for some other reason?” Lee asked, taking the stool next to her. He leaned back against the bar, eyes bright with amusement for a brief moment. The spark died a second later, but he kept a smile on his face. “I was at the truck stop, actually.”

“Mind telling us what the hell you were doing there?” Tigh demanded, and Lee looked at him. “Drag us out here to the middle of nowhere and—”

“And no one asked you to come after me,” Lee told him. “I'm the one on leave, not any of you. Retirement isn't the same thing, and you won't convince me that it is. I don't understand why when I say I'm using my vacation time to come out here, everyone invited themselves along.”

“I figured we'd get in some actual fishing,” Bill said. “Something we haven't done since you were a kid.”

Lee nodded. “That's true. We haven't. Probably with good reason.”

Bill frowned. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means... we argue too much to make hours in a boat feel like anything else but torture,” Lee said, but he laughed as he did, taking some of the sting out of his words. “Oh, damn.”

“Lee?” Laura asked, concerned.

“I need to deal with something,” he said. “I'm sure, knowing Dad, you didn't actually find a place to stay yet, so if you want to do that now, I'll meet back up with you for dinner, okay?”

She nodded, accepting his promise and knowing she'd have to calm Bill down all over again. Lee started for the man who'd just come in the bar, and she did not think that conversation was going to be pleasant.

“I don't like this,” Bill said, and he was on the move before she could stop him.

* * *

“Agent Adams. Just the man I was looking for.”

Lee held in his reaction, trying to remain calm. He didn't want to get into this here, not in front of his family. He'd been hoping Laura would talk his father out of this or Ellen would get Tigh too drunk to make the trip, but Lee wasn't that lucky.

If they knew he'd come here after Leoben, if they saw how much Moretti looked like Kara...

Well, he could forget about being left alone ever again. They wouldn't trust him, and he'd be that much closer to a return to the psych ward.

“Or should I call you something else? Because I've got a source that says your name isn't Adams at all. I'd talk fast unless you want to be arrested for impersonating an agent.”

“The badge is real. And the name that goes with it is mine as much as the other one is,” Lee told him. He wasn't going to explain any of it to Longmire. Sometimes he didn't understand his reasons himself, so why bother telling them to anyone else?

“Not sure I'd trust a man who lies about his name.”

“I didn't lie. I just chose the part I use,” Lee said. “And I wouldn't be the first. I think your source might understand more of that than you think.”

“My source?”

Lee almost laughed. “Are you really going to tell me it wasn't the bartender who told you about the other name? Or prompted that visit after your daughter and I talked? His name is Henry, isn't it? That's a nice Anglicized name.”

“You going to tell me that you did the same?”

“My grandfather did. He chose Adams because it was less Tauron than Adama. Apparently, he was sick of being called a 'dirt eater.' But no, that's not why I did it,” Lee answered, being honest if non-committal. “I told you that you could make me leave. I am only here on vacation, such as it is.”

Longmire gave him a long, hard look. “You think this Conoy is here?”

“Yes.” Lee knew he was. Leoben wouldn't have been far from a woman that looked as much like Kara as Victoria Moretti did. Wherever she was, that was where Leoben would be, waiting for his moment.

“Do we have a problem here, gentlemen?”

Lee groaned. “Dad, we're fine. You didn't have to intervene. Sheriff Longmire and I had just reached an understanding.”

His father met Longmire's gaze, and Lee wondered if it was worth going over and making bets with Tigh on who would last longer in that staring contest. Laura might find it funny. He wasn't sure. 

His father's voice came out like the commander he was. “That so?”

“Oh, for frak's sake,” Lee muttered, shaking his head. “I don't need you to fight my battles for me, but since you never believe that...”

“Where are you going?”

“It doesn't matter,” Lee said, then caught his father's look and relented. “To talk to your wife because I like her better than you.”

Longmire must have been amused, because as Lee walked away, he heard his father's voice. “You laugh, but he's telling the truth.”

* * *

“All right, the truth,” Lee said as he approached the bar. “He thinks I'm completely incompetent, doesn't he?”

Laura sighed, reaching over to put her hand on his arm. “No, he doesn't. I told you before—he's worried about you. And your father manifests worry in an overprotective streak that is more stifling than it is productive. You feel that he sees you as incapable. I sometimes wonder if he sees me as fragile.”

“You? Impossible. You have a backbone of pure steel,” Lee said. He looked around her shoulder at Tigh. “I take it he heard from Ellen again.”

“Yes, I think so, though he hasn't admitted it yet. He was already a bit... gone when he got here, unfortunately.”

“I wish she saw what she did to him,” Lee said, shaking his head. “I still remember what he was like when... when she wasn't as obvious as she is now. That was the Uncle Saul we wanted, the one we respected. Not this. Not...”

 _The one that reminds you of your mother?_ Laura thought, but did not ask. She knew better than to ask Lee about Carolanne. Bill sometimes had his illusions about that woman, but Laura didn't. As far as she was concerned, the best thing that woman had done—besides giving the world two wonderful men in the Adama boys—was cut off all contact after her stint in rehab. Still, the damage had been done, and Lee struggled with it, from his own dangerous dance with the same disease to the fear he carried of it claiming someone else he knew and cared about, just as it had his father's best friend.

“So tell me,” she said instead. “Why did you choose this place as your vacation destination?”

“Figured I'd do a spirit walk.”

She snorted, almost spilling her drink all over the bar. “Oh, Lee, don't do that to me, please. While I know that your great-uncle would have been pleased to see you embracing your Tauron heritage, I know you're lying.”

Lee nodded. “I sometimes think about it, about digging further into and learning more, but I don't think it's going to happen any time soon. There's... something else I have to finish first.”

“Maybe you need to make peace with yourself first.”

“I'm not at war with Tauron side of me. Well, it's only a quarter or so in me. Maybe less.” Lee shook his head. “Look, when he's done 'defending' me from Longmire, try and convince him he doesn't need to stay here for me. As much as I love seeing you, not now. Not here.”

Laura closed her eyes, hating herself for her perception. “You're after Leoben, aren't you?”

Lee walked away without answering, but that was answer enough for her. For a former lawyer, he was a terrible liar.

* * *

“This whole thing makes me sick,” Vic said, pushing the file away from her. “I've seen some messed up things working as a cop, but this...”

“And here I thought nothing could get to you,” Branch said, and she glared at him. Sometimes she really couldn't stand him. Other times, he was a decent cop and almost a human being. This wasn't one of those times.

“Have you even looked at these files?” She doubted it, or they wouldn't even be having this conversation. Branch wouldn't talk like that if he'd seen the torture that psycho had put these women through. When he'd finished with them, letting them die was kind. A mercy, and she didn't think they actually got from him by his choice. He hadn't wanted to let them go, hadn't wanted to let them free in any sense of the word.

“Not yet. You know he doesn't trust me.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” Vic said. “Couldn't have anything to do with the fact that you're running against him for sheriff, could it?”

Branch gave her a look before picking up the file. His first glance stopped him. “Damn. Are we sure the guy that did this is here?”

“That's what the agent told Walt, but Walt doesn't trust him or his tip, and so far Ferg hasn't turned up anything at the truck stop other than finding out that he's the second one who's been out there asking about this guy.”

“So the agent went out there.”

“Yup,” Vic agreed. “He's either good at covering his tracks or he's actually doing his job.”

“Which do you think it is?” Branch asked, leaning against his desk and continuing to flip through the photos as he did.

“No idea. Haven't met him.”

“You think you'd change your mind if you did?”

Vic rolled her eyes. “I think I don't have enough information to make a decision right now.”

“Vic?” Ruby called, coming into the room. She had a manila folder in her hands. “I have another one for you.”

“Another victim?”

Ruby shook her head. “Walt wanted more information on this man. It took longer to get than the rest of them, though I'm not sure why.”

Branch made a move for the file, but Vic intercepted it first, pulling it with her back to her own desk. She opened it and stared at the picture. That man, those eyes... It was just a photograph, but she felt like she was being watched. It made her sick to her stomach.

“He looks like a killer.”

She blinked, looking up at Branch. “What?”

“That smile. It's like he can't wait to stab you in the back.”

Vic nodded, though something else about it unsettled her. She didn't know what it was, but she couldn't shake it. Something about Leoben Conoy was familiar, and she needed to figure out what it was. Fast.

* * *

“He's still watching you.”

Lee nodded. He hadn't missed it. Longmire had followed them into the restaurant and kept an eye on them the entire time they ate. Tigh hadn't said much, preoccupied with the beers he kept drinking down and later the steak he'd ordered so rare it made Laura queasy throughout the meal. Had it been another time and place, Lee might have teased her about being pregnant, but she wasn't and the timing was lousier than usual.

“I don't think whatever you told him made him less suspicious,” Lee said, reaching for his drink and finishing it off. “Did you have to get involved? I think you made it worse.”

His father looked at him in that way of his, the disapproving commander one. “You created plenty of trouble for yourself.”

“Did Longmire tell you he was planning on arresting me?”

“No.”

“I suppose I'm grateful,” Lee muttered. He set his napkin down on the table and dug out his wallet, setting a twenty on the table. Rising, he leaned over to give Laura's cheek a kiss. “I'd offer to help you get these two old bears back to the hotel, but I think that would end in bloodshed, so I'd better not. Don't let them give you too much trouble.”

She smiled, fond but bittersweet all the same, and he didn't kid himself. She knew what he was doing here. He didn't know why she hadn't said anything to his father, but it wouldn't last forever.

He left the restaurant and started walking across town. Durant wasn't big enough to where he needed a car to get through the town—when he did expand his search for Leoben, he'd go back to driving, but he needed to find Victoria Moretti first. He didn't know where she was on her vacation, so for now, he had to stick close to her work and hope he wasn't already too late.

This would have been a lot easier if Longmire was not as good a cop as he seemed to be. He knew Lee was holding back, and the name issue didn't help things. It wouldn't have been an issue if his family hadn't shown up. No one would have used the name Lee or Adama and made his omissions seem like something more sinister than they were.

At this rate, they probably thought he was the killer, not Leoben.

He shook his head, forcing himself onward. He wasn't far from the hotel now, and once he got there, he'd figure out his next move. He had an idea—it hadn't left him since he first learned that Moretti was on vacation—but he'd been trying to tell himself that he wouldn't cross that line.

He had a feeling he might, especially with the pressure of his father's presence here.

“Apollo.”

The name made him turn, but before he had a chance to react fully, he'd been slammed into the brick wall behind him. His head connected enough to darken his vision—Leoben always seemed to have strength that seemed almost supernatural.

“You can't stop this. I don't know why you keep trying,” Leoben said, leaning into Lee's face. His body blocked Lee's path, and one of his hands went into Lee's hair, yanking on it as he got closer. “It is her destiny. I am her destiny.”

“You're _insane,”_ Lee hissed, trying to break Leoben's hold or get some leverage to force the other man off of him. He should be gasping for air right now, didn't know why he wasn't. If he could get free, get his gun, then he could end this. Here. Now. “No one would want you for a destiny, and what you do to those women isn't showing them any revelation of faith or a path they're supposed to take. You twist faith like you twist everything.”

“She belongs with me,” Leoben insisted, and Lee felt a sharp stab in his side, followed quickly by a second and then a third. Lee thought he heard himself cry out, but he didn't know. Everything was hazy already. He'd lost, and he hadn't even had a chance to fight. “I am the one to guide her.”

Lee shook his head, managing to maneuver himself enough knock Leoben off of him. He thought he heard the knife skid across the pavement, but he wasn't sure. He leaned against the wall, sucking in air as he pulled out his gun with a shaking hand. “This ends now.”

“It only ends when one of us dies,” Leoben said. “I've seen the truth, the path, and it is not yours. Yours ends here. Mine lies with her.”

Lee pulled the trigger, but he knew even as he pulled it that it would miss. Leoben knocked the gun out of Lee's hand, and he dove for it, falling short. He dragged himself toward it, but Leoben moved faster, getting the gun and putting it next to Lee's head.

“I told you how this would end, Apollo. You die here.”

Lee snorted. “You and your speeches. You can't actually do it, can you? What is it? Not... not enough torture for you? Or... because I'm not a woman you... claim to love?”

“You must die to clear the path.”

“Drop it,” a woman ordered, and Lee frowned, trying to place the voice. “Right now. I won't warn you twice.”

“This is too soon. You're not ready for the stream,” Leoben said. “Though it is fitting you're here to see his end. He holds you back from what you must become. Yes, witness the end.”

“I told you I wouldn't warn you twice,” she said, and Lee flinched as her gun went off. The pressure against his temple disappeared, and he heard something clatter before there was a rush of footsteps. Someone was running. He fell forward, catching himself and rolling over onto his back.

Dizzy. He wasn't sure if it was the concussion or the knife wound. He supposed it didn't matter. He would stay where he was.

“Damn. I lost him. I know I hit him. He wouldn't have dropped the gun if I hadn't, but I don't see him,” she said, and Lee thought about telling her about his steroid theory, but he was too tired. He jerked, feeling a hand on him, and he tried to fight, but she caught his hands. “Easy. Calm down. That's a lot of blood, and you need to stay still until we get you help.”

Lee shook his head. He wasn't even sure he wanted help. Not now. Not when she was here. “I missed you, Kara.”


	3. Of Looks and Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The attack on Lee only creates more questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to get this part ready for posting before I left town, but it wasn't cooperating. Here I am about to go, needing to get a lot done before I do, and I spent my morning so far with coffee and the final scene, needing to fix it so it worked.
> 
> Well, it's up to debate, but I did like the way it played out, even if it's a little hard for me to do Moretti because Kara keeps getting in the way for me as an author as well.

* * *

Vic rolled her shoulders, trying to get the tension out of her neck. She wanted a drink or maybe a dozen, anything to rid her mind of those women and the man that had killed them. She kept going over it, again and again, and she couldn't figure it out. She didn't know who Leoben Conoy was or how she knew him—if she even did—but she knew staring at the pictures on her desk weren't going to change anything.

A drink probably wouldn't, either, but she didn't care. She would rather have a few than sit with nothing to do but stare at pictures that turned her stomach.

She was almost to her truck when she heard the shot. Turning, she ran toward it, hoping it was just a bad night and she was going to find a couple drunken idiots she could bust for using their guns inside city limits.

She wasn't half that lucky.

She rounded the corner to the words _you die here._ Swallowing, she pulled out her gun and prepared herself, aiming at the man who'd spoken, the one with the gun. She needed to know what the hell was happening here, but she had a feeling it wouldn't matter. Someone was getting a bullet tonight.

“You and your speeches,” the other man said, too damn brave in the face of the gun next to his head, but she wouldn't have wanted him to be a coward. Not only did she need to know what was going on, she didn't really like hearing people beg for their lives. “You can't actually do it, can you? What is it? Not... not enough torture for you? Or... because I'm not a woman you... claim to love?”

Oh, hell. Was this guy Adams? The agent? And would that make the other one Conoy?

“You must die to clear the path.”

“Drop it,” Vic ordered. She almost took the shot without warning him first, but she didn't. She would do this right, even if every instinct told her to shoot first and question later when it came to Conoy. “Right now. I won't warn you twice.”

Conoy looked at her, a strange look on his face that became a smile as he spoke. “This is too soon. You're not ready for the stream. Though it is fitting you're here to see his end. He holds you back from what you must become. Yes, witness the end.”

_“I float in the stream. I can see the path,” the man said, and Vic rolled her eyes as she tried to turn the tire iron. She needed to get this wheel off, but the damned thing was not moving._

_“Yeah? Well, I'm not much of a fisher,” Vic muttered, and he took the tire iron, moving it with ease. She frowned. She had changed tires before, and she could have gotten it going. She didn't know why it was so damn stubborn today, but she didn't need help. “Thanks.”_

_“It's your path, too.”_

_She snorted. “Forget it, mister. I'm married, and even if I wasn't, there's at least one more ahead of you in line.”_

_“None of that matters,” he said. “I've seen it.”_

“I told you I wouldn't warn you twice,” she said, trying not to shudder as she pulled the trigger. He'd been right next to her. He'd touched her, said they were supposed to be together, and Vic didn't even know that wasn't the reason why she shot him. She couldn't be sure.

He ran. She heard his gun fall as he fled, but she ignored it, rushing after him. She rounded the corner, seeing the town square and no one in sight. What the hell? Where'd he go?

She shook her head, torn. She didn't even know where to start after Conoy. She shouldn't have lost him that fast. She couldn't even blame it on pulling the trigger. She wasn't in a haze. She'd ran as soon as he did, but he was nowhere to be seen.

She turned back, thinking she must have missed something. Or Adams would have something for her. Just how had he ended up with a gun pointed at him anyway?

“Damn. I lost him. I know I hit him. He wouldn't have dropped the gun if I hadn't, but I don't see him,” Vic muttered as she came back across the gun. Then she got a look at Adams, down on the ground and rushed to his side. Kneeling next to him, she could see the sheen of blood on his shirt, and her hand went to it. He groaned and tried to push her away. “Easy. Calm down. That's a lot of blood, and you need to stay still until we get you help.”

“I missed you, Kara,” he whispered, and she frowned, but she didn't have time to think about that when she heard footsteps behind her.

She pointed her gun at Walt and swore. “What the hell, Walt? Make a little noise for a girl, would you?”

Walt ignored her. “What happened here?”

“Not entirely sure,” Vic admitted, her hands covered in blood. “I was headed back to my truck, heard a shot, found him with a gun to his head, and then I shot the guy threatening him.”

“You missed?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, I got him. I know I did, but that bastard took off like a bolt of lightning and was just... gone. I came back to ask a question and get the gun, and I found him like this. He's bleeding out.”

“Phone,” Walt ordered, and she shifted her hip to expose it while she kept her hands on Adams' wound. He'd already closed his eyes, and she wasn't sure he was going to last for the ambulance to get him. “Ruby, I need an ambulance. Get Branch and Ferg on the move. And call Mathias. Get them Conoy's picture and get it circulating. I don't want him to have a rock to hide under.”

“This is Adams?”

“Or Adama. Depends on who you ask,” Walt said, hanging up the phone and looking at the agent. “It was Conoy?”

She nodded. “I recognized him from the pictures.”

_And something else._

“Vic?”

“Who the hell is Kara?”

* * *

“Gods, Lee, don't scare us like that again,” Laura said, taking her stepson's hand in hers and squeezing it, needing the reassurance that he was actually alive. He looked pale—he tended to, most of the time—but this was worse, coming so close on the heels of the last time they'd been here, in this same position. Last time it was a bullet through his shoulder, one that had gone untreated for hours while he was at the mercy of that same sick man who had been nothing but a plague and a shadow over their family for almost a decade now.

“You heard her,” Bill said stiffly, still not revealing how much seeing his son like this affected him. The stoicism was admirable in a commander. She found it obnoxious in a husband and father. “You had better wake up from this.”

“Bill—”

“Mr. Adama?”

Bill turned back to the sheriff. “Longmire. Tell me what you know.”

Longmire and Bill stared each other down. Bill wasn't about to back down from the order he'd issued, and Longmire wasn't about to take it. Laura put a hand to her head.

“You can't ask for a sitrep right now,” she said. “Sheriff, please. Anything you can tell us about—anything that might help us understand or know how to proceed... Have we found any sign of the man who did this? Do you know who it was?”

“We think so. Need your son to wake up and confirm it, though.”

Bill snorted. “Like hell you do. We all know who did this. It was Leoben Conoy.”

“Then you're aware of your son's obsession with Conoy.”

“My son isn't the one with an obsession,” Bill snapped. Laura move to put her hand on his arm, trying to calm him, but he pulled away with a snarl. “Lee gave up a promising career in the Navy and went and became a lawyer—a frakking lawyer—after what that bastard did. He buried himself in the law and didn't surface for years until that frakker pulled him back into this nightmare.”

Longmire frowned. “Your son represented energy companies?”

“No,” Laura said. “I haven't quite gotten the full story on the use of 'frak,' but as I understand it, and while it's not completely Tauron in origin, that particular usage is common among people of their descent—and it is a more socially acceptable alternative to another that starts with an 'f.'”

Longmire's look suggested he was aware of the meaning of the word the way Bill had used it, but he'd asked, so she answered. “Your son came to me saying he was investigating a serial killer. He implied it was an authorized trip. Clearly it wasn't.”

“Lee's never been very far from the investigation into Leoben's crimes, despite his efforts,” Laura told him. “Later it was by choice. In the beginning, it was not.”

Longmire looked between them. “Was your son ever a suspect in the killings?”

“No,” Bill ground out, but Saul snorted, making a lie of that. Laura sighed. Trying to obscure things would not help.

“Once,” Laura corrected. “But only in the disappearance and only because they didn't understand the depth of his connection to his friend. I know nothing about the military, and I don't know much about flying, but I have seen videos of what Lee used to be, of his talent. When Leoben went after his wingman... He was never the same. As Bill said, Lee resigned his commission and went into private practice. He was completely removed from his former life.”

“His wingman?”

“Apollo and Starbuck,” Saul said. “The stuff of legends.”

Laura frowned. “Saul, that's not necessary. The mockery is—”

“Wasn't a mockery. She was an insubordinate pain in the ass and he's a self-righteous prick, but that doesn't change what they were—damn fine pilots, the kind few people can dream of being.” Saul grunted. “Doesn't please me to say it, but it's the truth.”

Laura sighed. Saul always did have a way with words. She would have thought the conversation could only deteriorate from here when they were spared from that fate by something close to a miracle. Lee's hand pulled from hers, and she turned to him, seeing his eyes open, if a bit confused.

“Lee. You're awake, thank goodness. How are you feeling?”

He groaned, shifting in the bed. “Um... Drugged.”

His response was so honest that she laughed, reaching over to brush back some of his hair. She loved that Lee had accepted her, had truly given her a chance to be a mother, and that he was such a good man that her only regret was that she hadn't met Bill sooner and gotten this opportunity when the boys were still young.

“How's your throat? They took a tube out of you earlier,” she said, reclaiming his hand. “Your lung collapsed, too, so you did well on scaring a few years off all of us.”

Lee closed his eyes again. “Got blindsided. Pisses me off... Should have seen it coming.”

“Conoy always target you before he goes for his latest kill?”

Lee met the sheriff's gaze, holding it for a long moment before shaking his head. “No. That's new, but I think... This cycle is different.”

“How so?”

“Walt?” a woman called out, and Laura wasn't the only one to whip around and look at her. “I'm supposed to tell you you're late.”

“Henry,” Longmire said. “I'll be there in a minute. First I have to—”

“Oh, my gods. Kara.”

“It's not her,” Lee said quietly. “Though... I'm pretty sure I made that mistake last night, too.”

* * *

Vic didn't do messenger, and she wasn't sure why she was willing to relay this one for Walt other than that everything had gotten stifling after last night. Walt had stayed with her all through the wait and getting Adams to the hospital, and Sean had started in the minute she finally got home, freaking out over the blood on her hands and her refusal to talk about it. Walt must have told Branch and Ferg something because she hadn't been alone for more than thirty seconds today, no matter what she was doing.

She was getting pretty damn sick of it, and she'd actually jumped at the chance to take Henry's message to Walt. He was ready to track, could have started right then—if Walt hadn't gotten it in his head to go to the hospital.

She could have called, but she didn't want to stand around being watched by Henry and Branch, which was a situation that was damned close to deserving hazard pay in the first place—Henry was nothing if not a good friend. Besides, this way she got to see Adams' condition for herself. She'd gone home with his blood still on her, and she didn't even know if he was still alive. She assumed Walt would have told them if he wasn't, but then again, maybe he wouldn't. Sometimes she had no idea what went on in Walt's head, and she wouldn't be surprised if this case ended up being one of those times.

“Walt?” Vic called as she came up to the room. She would have knocked on the door, but she didn't need to. Everyone was looking at her. Some were even staring. She tried not to notice. “I'm supposed to tell you you're late.”

“Henry,” Walt said, knowing exactly what that was about and where he should be right now. “I'll be there in a minute. First I have to—”

“Oh, my gods. Kara,” the other woman said, her hand going to her mouth as she continued to stare at Vic.

“It's not her,” Adams said quietly. “Though... I'm pretty sure I made that mistake last night, too.”

Vic shrugged. “I figure anyone in your condition would be doing good to remember to breathe. I'm not even sure I mind, except I'm getting pretty damn curious about who this 'Kara' person is. I'd even joke about being jealous, but I think my husband would get a little upset by that.”

Walt wasn't going to Henry just yet. She knew that much. He'd come here for answers, too, and he hadn't gotten them, but she just might.

“Wallet,” Adams said, and the woman let go of his hand to go to his belongings. She stopped when she saw the bloodstains, swallowing hard. He didn't miss it. “Laura, I'm fi—alive. I'm still here. It's okay.”

“The frak it is,” one of the older men said, his eyes on Adams. “You almost died again. And he's still out there.”

“I know, Dad,” Adams said, closing his eyes and putting a hand on his side. He hissed in pain, and Laura rushed back to him.

“Let us call the doctor. They should have been in to see you by now.”

Adams shook his head, taking the wallet from her. He wrapped his fingers around it before closing his eyes. Laura's expression gave away her feelings on that, the concern all over her as she hovered over him. His father's stony look almost seemed like a condemnation of him, but then he looked at the woman and she touched him, and Vic could see that his anger was directed not at his son but at his own helplessness, being unable to do anything while the man who'd done this to his kid.

“Need... the other one,” Adams said. “Credentials.”

“Why didn't you ask for that first?” the third man grumbled, going to the bag and dumping it out. “Look at this mess. Surprised you have anything left in you with that much on your clothes.”

“Didn't think... you cared, Uncle Saul,” Adams muttered.

“Don't,” the other man said, tossing him the billfold. “Shouldn't need that here.” 

Adams tried to flip him off, but he ended up dropping his hand to his side, gritting his teeth as he did. “Damn.”

“That's it,” Laura said. “I'm getting the doctor. And don't you dare argue. I know what it looks like when you're in pain.”

He nodded. “You're the president.”

Laura bit her lip, fighting tears as she touched his cheek, and he leaned into her hand before closing his eyes again. She sighed, shaking her head.

“I swear, Bill. You Adamas live on sheer will alone.”

“He'll be fine, Laura. You know Lee. He's too damn stubborn to die,” Bill said, putting his arms around her as he did. “At least he listens to you. He'd fight me every step of the way about the doctor, and he'd just get mad if I overruled him.”

“That is because you order. You're a commander, it's part of your charm, but your son doesn't want to be ordered, he wants—”

“Can still hear you,” Adams muttered, and everyone but Walt laughed. He nodded to the hall, and she followed him out, knowing they needed to talk.

* * *

“Henry _is_ waiting for you.”

Walt nodded. He knew that. Conoy was still out there, and they needed to find him before he killed someone else. Even if that someone ended up being a lying federal agent and not the women he claimed to be here to save.

“You get what you needed from here?”

Walt shook his head. “No. Adams was still asleep when I got here, and his family kept him from answering the questions I wanted to ask.”

“I think he was going to tell us—maybe just me—something,” Vic said. “Even if he wasn't, I want to know who Kara is and why everyone seems to think I look like her.”

“You might not like where that goes,” Walt warned. He had a theory or two himself.

She snorted. “You think I can't deal with a fed having a crush on me?”

“It's the serial killer with a crush you should worry about,” Walt reminded her. If he was right, Conoy had targeted her because of her resemblance to this Kara. He wouldn't stop until he got Vic.

“So go find him,” Vic said, rolling her eyes. “I think I can handle things here, though if you really want to babysit me, you can pull Branch or Ferg and have them come join me. Meanwhile, I'll keep an eye on Adams and—wait, _is_ it Adams? Because you said something last night, his father's name seems to be Adama, and the woman called him Lee.”

Walt looked at her. “From what I've heard, it's both. Think Adams is the professional name, Adama the private one. Ask him, though. It might be a place to start.”

“Like I can't handle my own interviews."

“Vic,” Walt said, and she looked at him, arms folded over her chest. “Adams may have come here knowing you were what Conoy was after all along. He said it was the personalities that drew Conoy to his victims—”

“Only you think it's because of looks.” She shook her head. “I saw the files, Walt. None of them looked that much like me.”

“Except for Kara.”

“There's no file on Kara, whoever she is.”

“He said there was no file on the first victim because there wasn't a body.”

Vic nodded, and Walt saw it. She was about to get stubborn about this. “Look, whatever else he said, when I got there, Conoy had a gun to his head and said he had to die before I could take whatever path it is he thinks I belong on. That part is real.”

“You left out that out of your report.”

She rolled her eyes. “I haven't written my report yet. It's on my list of a thousand and one things to do while being stalked and trying not to be end up dead at the hands of a serial killer, but it's kind of low priority, you know?”

Walt grunted. “You don't know what might have been important in what you saw and heard. We should go over it.”

“You should go with Henry and find the bastard. So go. Now.”

* * *

When the female deputy came back into the room, Laura forced a smile, giving Bill's arm a warning squeeze to remind him to be on his best behavior. He hadn't liked what he'd heard from the doctor—none of them did—but Lee was resting again, and Laura figured it was better if he did, since he was in so much pain. Still, it said volumes to the strange nature of Bill's relationship with his son that he preferred it when Lee was awake and arguing with him.

“I'm sorry about earlier,” Laura said. “It's just...”

“I look a lot like Kara,” the deputy finished. “I'm not her, though. I'm not sure who she is, but I've got brothers who love to tell stories about dropping me on my head, so... pretty sure I've always been Victoria Moretti.”

“Kara was an only child,” Bill said, and Laura knew he was remembering. He used to be quite close with Kara. This must be very difficult for him, not that he'd admit it. “She said that all changed when she met Zak, and then again when she joined the Navy.”

“Zak?”

“My other son,” Bill answered. “He and Kara... were involved.”

Moretti frowned. Laura figured she'd made the assumption that almost everyone did—that the Adama Kara had been involved with was Lee. They weren't entirely wrong, but they weren't right, either. “I thought—”

“What Zak and Kara had didn't last past her first semester at Annapolis,” Bill said. “We were disappointed, but Kara was still family. She ended up Lee's wingman, and we got her back even closer than before. Sometimes I think I saw her more when she was Lee's friend than Zak's girlfriend.”

Laura tried not to react, not needing to get into her own continued disbelief about her husband's naivete when it came to his son's feelings. She smiled instead. “Unfortunately, I never met Kara in person. What I know of her is from stories and photographs and some home movies Lee always swears she'd burn if she knew about them. Still, I agree. The resemblance between the two of you is strong.”

Moretti shrugged. “I still don't see it, but that's okay. I don't have to.”

Saul grunted, and Laura sighed. He was hungover, and dragging him along for this was a mistake, even if Bill needed his oldest friend to survive the threat to his son—another thing no one would admit.

“Perhaps we should get some coffee.”

Moretti checked her watch. “Maybe even some lunch. I didn't realize how late it had gotten.”

Laura nodded. “We do need to eat.”

“I'm not leaving my son alone.”

“He wouldn't be,” Moretti said immediately. She fidgeted under their eyes. “Your son got shot on our watch. Walt takes that personally, believe me.”

Bill glared at her. “Not sure I find that at all reassuring.”

“Bill, please. Saul's looking worn, and he's not the only one. Lee's asleep, and Moretti is the reason your son is alive right now. She already protected him once. Let her do it again.”

Bill grunted, but he let her lead him out of the room.

* * *

“That is one impressive act. I'm surprised they didn't see through it, since they're family.”

Lee almost laughed. She might sound a lot like Kara, but she didn't know him or his family well enough or she'd already have the answer to that. Oh, Laura rarely missed things, so he wasn't sure what had happened there, but his father never saw through much of anything, and Saul would probably prefer it if Lee never woke up again.

“How long have you known I was awake?”

“Since before I came back in the room,” she said, coming over to the bed. He wanted to laugh, but this whole thing felt wrong—she was talking a little too much like Kara, and the way she looked—it just hurt. He knew he'd been stabbed, but everything about Moretti was like a sucker punch. “Clarify something for me—”

“For you, Adams. Please. Just... just stick to that one,” Lee told her, knowing he wouldn't be able to take it if she said Lee anything like the way Kara used to. He forced himself up and grabbed the billfold. Slipping his fingers behind the badge that proclaimed him an agent of NCIS, he pulled out a folded photograph and held it out to her.

She stared. He wasn't sure if she was going to get sick or not. “I'd say I dressed up nice for Halloween, but I know I never used that as a costume, and while I've got a few idiots I call brothers, I don't have a twin.”

“Kara was an only child.”

“So your family said but they didn't make it sound like it was a good thing.”

He shook his head. Kara's mother wasn't something he would discuss with anyone else. That was still hers. Still private. “We have... twenty minutes, tops.”

She blinked. “What?”

“You want answers to about a million questions I won't discuss here. Here, or anywhere else in front of my family. I love Laura, but she wasn't there. My dad... he's never understood and he willingly chooses not to. Tigh is...”

“A drunk?”

“Among other things, but if you knew Ellen, you'd understand that more,” Lee said. He focused on Moretti, hard as it was with her sharing Kara's face. “I don't want to be a sitting duck when Leoben comes back.”

She studied him. “You think he'll come for you first?”

Lee nodded. “He's never done it before, only harassed me after he... after he took them, but... this is different. He wanted me dead to clear or create your path. Maybe both. I can't be trapped here and doped up when he comes.”

“Yeah, well, your track record against him isn't very good.”

“I'm pretty sure half of his delusions are drug based and they give him a nasty edge in a fight. Usually I hold my own a lot better until he's tortured me for a few days. That... was quick. I still don't understand what happened.”

She nodded. “Okay, say I agree to any of that—you can't move. You could barely pick up that wallet. Plus... Walt's usually a good judge of character. He doesn't trust you.”

Lee wanted to throw something or hit someone. “Do you know how many times they've accused me of working with Leoben? That bastard destroyed my life. He killed the woman I—he killed Kara. He cost me the Navy, ruined my law career, and I do think he kept me alive so that I could take the fall for his crimes in the end. I came here to stop him. I'd like to kill him with my bare hands, I won't lie about that, and I won't—”

“Work with anyone who thinks you're working with him,” she finished. “Good. Because I don't. So... we have less than twenty minutes, you have no clothes, and you can't move. How do you want to do this?”

She's too much like Kara. No, Lee was too weak. They weren't the same. Still, this would hurt. “He didn't stab me below the belt. Pants are almost salvageable. Hospitals have gift shops, but you don't have long.”

“Or any guarantee you'll still be here when I get back.”

Lee met her gaze. “Or that.”


	4. Husbands and Horsehoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Walt and Henry track Leoben at the crime scene. Vic and Lee follow another lead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I was overly optimistic about this one. I figured I could resolve it in a few scenes, get it all tidy, but I have to remember that my AUs get messy, complicated, and never have a good ending place. This one I know can't finish until the killer is caught, but that seems farther and farther out of reach despite my efforts... and because other AUs are nagging at me.
> 
> And I did end up mixing in some canon-like details into this part, things I wasn't planning on doing, but they made sense, so I let them stay.

* * *

“You are late.”

Walt grunted. He couldn't say that what he was doing was more important, not necessarily, but Henry didn't actually need him there to track. Walt trusted him to do that on his own. He didn't know why Henry insisted on his presence, but he could have done this hours ago and they could be arresting Conoy now for assault.

“Hospital,” Walt answered. “Wanted to see what Adams had to say for himself.”

“And?”

“Didn't get much. Adams was still unconscious when I got there, and then his family talked over and around him even when Vic showed up.”

Henry knelt next to the ground, examining the spot where Adams had fallen. The concrete was still stained with his blood, and it had mixed in with the dirt and detritus as well. “You do not sound pleased, and it is more than a few unanswered questions.”

“According to more than one Adama, Vic looks like a woman named Kara.”

“I imagine Vic looks a great deal like many women,” Henry said, and Walt glared at him. Henry shrugged. “We all share features with someone, whether we wish it or not. Vic does, though she is also quite unique, as we all are.”

Walt shook his head at the double talk. “It's not impossible for her to look like any number of people. What concerns me is that she looks like the original target. Adams said that Conoy chose them based on personality, that they reminded him of Starbuck, but Starbuck was Kara. She was his wingman when he was in the Navy.”

“You are worried.”

“Vic can handle herself most days, and she was the one that shot Conoy,” Walt began. “Still, she's already a target and Adams lied about it. I don't think he tracked Conoy here. I think he came here for Vic.”

“Do you believe he is involved with this Conoy?”

“To hear his family tell it, Adams is as much a victim of Conoy as the women are. It's not just about killing them. Conoy has to involve him somehow. Don't have all the details there, but Adams did say Conoy had tried to kill him more than once, and Adams' father seems to think that not only was Adams' decision to leave the Navy but also in joining NCIS.”

“He told Cady he was a fighter pilot, a lawyer, and an agent.”

Walt looked at him. “How much of those conversations did you hear?”

“Bits and pieces. I listened to more of Cady's than I should have after you raised suspicions about Adams. I heard part of his family's conversation as well, which is how you came to know that his name is actually Adama.” Henry picked up some dirt and ran it through his fingers. “What is it you wish to know?”

“Everything,” Walt said, and his friend laughed. “I'm not sure. I feel there's something I'm missing that will bring this all together, but so far all I've got is a bunch of questions. Too much of Adams is unknown, and I'm not sure he's done lying. He's holding so much back that could be important.”

“He is like you.”

“The hell you say.”

Henry stood. “I think if you were to ask Cady about it, she would agree. You concealed her mother's murder from her. You did it for her good, but that does not change what you did. Nor does it change other secrets you have kept. You did not tell your wife. You do not tell your daughter. You would not tell some strange agent of your troubles. Nor would Adama.”

“He's not protecting anyone.”

“I disagree. I believe he is protecting himself.”

“That's not the same thing.”

Henry shook his head. “If he sees himself as the reason that Vic will survive, then it is. He is here to stop Conoy from getting to her. Whatever lies he may tell, however much he omits, he believes it serves the greater purpose of saving her.”

“Vic doesn't know him. She's as confused by this as the rest of us.”

“If all of the women Conoy kills are substitutes for one, and Adama was connected to that one, then he is connected to all of them,” Henry said, walking along the alley and up to where Vic said she'd lost Conoy the night before. “It does not matter if he knows them. He is bound to them.”

“Vic said Conoy claimed Adams had to die to clear her path.”

“That may well be true,” Henry agreed. “As long as Adama exists, he is a tether. An anchor. The reason why she would stay behind even if called to the land of the ancestors.”

Walt rubbed his forehead. “Would you stop calling him Adama? It's hard to keep track of who we're talking about, and you're doing enough to give me a headache without switching the names.”

“No.”

Walt eyed him. “This have something to do with the fact that he's Tauron?”

“A quarter or less, he said, but yes, it is,” Henry said, kneeling down to examine the ground again. “To call him Adams is to deny his heritage and also the person you need most in the days to come.”

“Are you getting visions from the stream now?”

“No.”

“Then—”

“Lee Adama was the one who was in love with Kara, whoever she is. He is the one who has to fight this battle, not Joe Adams. Adams is his means of control, of distancing himself from his own pain. Only by uniting the sides of himself and accepting the pain can he overcome it and Conoy.”

Walt grunted. “No one ever said he was in love with Kara.”

Henry seemed amused. “No one had to.”

* * *

“They're going to be angry.”

“My father's more bark than bite, if that's what you're worried about, and Saul doesn't actually care enough to do anything,” Lee said, trying to find a comfortable position in Moretti's truck. His side was killing him, and he shouldn't talk. Breathing hurt.

“I told them I would watch over you.”

“Don't,” Lee bit out, and she looked over at him, startled by his reaction. He grimaced. “Sorry. It's just... Kara and I... She used to say that. Not like you did, so it's not even... She used to nudge me and ask what I'd do without her to watch over me. It was... One of those things, I guess. Started after we almost got shot down on the edge of the no-fly zone. She pulled one of her stunts and saved me from a missile that had lock on me. It actually used to piss me off. Everyone knew she was the better pilot. I didn't need a reminder.”

“But you miss her,” Moretti said, and Lee nodded. “I get it. I had a partner back in Philly. We were pretty close. He was like my brother—well, better than a brother because I could stand him unlike most of my own—Damn, what did I say this time?”

Lee winced, wishing he wasn't so weak and easy to read. “My brother... he...”

“He's dead, too.”

Lee turned to the window. “He is.”

“Then they're really going to be pissed I helped you out of there,” Moretti said, and he looked over at her. She rolled her eyes. “Is every conversation with you like walking through a minefield?”

He almost laughed. “You should hear me and Dad go at it.”

“That's different. All fathers and sons argue with each other.”

Lee snorted. “I don't even know that Dad and I know what we're fighting about half the time. Sometimes I wonder if the whole name thing didn't screw us over from the beginning.”

“What, Adams?”

“No. William.” Lee put his hand on his side. “I don't admit it often, but my full name is William Joseph Adama the second.”

“That's a mouthful.”

“Could be worse. I'm told it was going to be Leland.”

She smiled. “That's not so bad.”

“You're kidding. Kara had a field day with it when she found that out. She went around for weeks calling me Leland in this obnoxious voice, all high pitched and unlike her. Drove me nuts. She'd just look at me and laugh. She said the fact that I went by Lee most of the time was proof that Leland should have been my name and she was going to use it for the rest of my life.”

“How'd you convince her not to?”

Lee shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. “Not discussing that.”

Moretti looked at him. “Come on. You don't expect me to believe that, do you? That you didn't find a good way to shut her up? What was it? A prank? Blackmail? Sex?”

Lee rolled his eyes. “I'm pretty sure Kara would have used Leland in bed just to screw with me, but it wasn't like that with us.”

“You're kidding.”

“No.”

“Why the hell not?” Moretti demanded. “It didn't take long to figure out you loved her. I think I knew from the moment you saw her when you looked at me.”

“Kara was married. There are lines you don't cross.”

“Yeah,” Moretti said, her eyes back on the road as her grip tightened on the steering wheel.

Lee thought about asking her about her own line crossing feelings just to get some of his own back, but he was tired. Being petty wasn't worth it. “Speaking of husbands... Yours is in danger.”

She frowned. “You think he'd go after Sean?”

Sean. Sam. Gods, the similarities were getting to be too much. “If he wants to kill me to clear your path, you think he wouldn't want to do the same for your husband? Leoben's frakked up in the head. I don't know where he went wrong, and I'm not sure I want to, but his idea of destiny involves showing you that you 'love' him. A husband's an obstacle to that, a damned big one.”

Moretti swore. “Sean will love this. He's already pissed at me.”

“I don't recommend letting Leoben solve your marital problems.”

She shook her head, fighting it for a second and then starting to laugh. “What the hell is wrong with me? That's not funny.”

“Gallows humor is required in our line of work, isn't it?”

“Maybe.”

* * *

“I think that note is better kept to ourselves,” Laura said, and Bill looked at her. She sighed, and he knew she was just as frustrated and betrayed as he was. He'd known that he shouldn't leave Lee, but he had, and the first chance he got, his son had fled. Bill knew Lee wasn't capable of actual running at the moment, but that hadn't stopped him. He'd left behind two things—a signed AMA and a note that made Bill want to take a swing at his own son. “The others won't understand his humor.”

“Because it isn't frakking funny,” Saul said. “Shouldn't even joke about something like that.”

_Kidapped Moretti and am taking her to Leoben._

Saul was right about that. It wasn't funny.

“He's asking us not to blame her,” Laura said, and Bill found himself once again jealous of her understanding of the way his son's mind worked. “Bill, he would have left without her help. It's better that he's not alone, and we all know that with her resemblance to Kara, she's a target. At least this way they can watch out for each other.”

“Watch him right into a frakking grave. I don't know when your kid got a death wish, Bill, but that boy's trying to get himself killed.”

Bill wanted to argue with that, but he couldn't. Lee was reckless, more so than he'd ever been in his life. Still, it wasn't hard to know why. Lee had taken Kara's death hard and never really came back from it, abandoning the Navy and later the law, never finding his feet again. Lee didn't know where he stood, and Bill couldn't find that for him, much as he'd tried over the years.

“Lee needs to do this,” Laura said. “He'll never be at peace as long as Leoben is alive.”

“Because that frakker won't let him be at peace. He must have baited Lee up here, gods know why, and is just waiting to try again to kill him. Then he'll torture that woman to death and start the whole thing over again.”

“Maybe not this time.”

Saul looked over at him. “What do you know about it?”

“Nothing,” Bill admitted. It wasn't like Lee talked to him much, if ever. “But Lee did say this cycle was different. He went after Lee before taking Moretti.”

“Yes,” Laura agreed. “In the past, he's drawn Lee in by the bodies he leaves behind, not in advance. I think he enjoyed how helpless Lee felt, unable to save them or end their suffering, unable to find him and stop him from hurting anyone else.”

“This has to stop,” Bill said. “I won't lose my son to that monster. He's taken enough from us already.”

Laura nodded. “I think we should meet with Sheriff Longmire and tell him what we know.”

Saul shook his head. “This isn't his fight—”

“It is,” Bill said. “Moretti's one of his. She matters to him. She isn't Kara, but that doesn't mean she won't be the one to end this.”

* * *

“You know, Vic told me that's where she lost Conoy.”

Henry nodded, shifting the dirt around as he did. “Yes, but it is not where he lost her.”

Walt frowned. “I have to figure he's still watching her, and he could have been when you got here and she showed you the lay of the land, but none of you saw anyone while you were here, and there wasn't anyone at the hospital.”

“That is true. It also does not change the signs. He may have run, but he came back. He watched.”

“The hell he did. I didn't see anyone when I found Vic with Adams, and she shot him. There should be blood, a hell of a lot of it if he stood there watching until Adams was in the ambulance. Vic and I weren't the only ones here, either. Branch and Ferg came, they locked down the scene, and no one got in. There weren't that many people gathering, either. Few stragglers from the Red Pony, few onlookers attracted by the ambulance—”

“He was here, Walt,” Henry insisted. What he saw told him that Conoy had been here, and he had stayed for some time. “Perhaps he stopped to treat himself first and that is why there is no blood, but he was here.”

Walt looked around him, still frowning. “You sure it was after he got shot?”

Henry considered the dirt again. “You believe this was where he waited for Adama?”

“Or Vic, but Adams crossed his path first.”

“From what you have told me, this killer does not seem impulsive. He is careful. Cunning. He would not have made a move without an escape plan.”

“So he was waiting for Adama,” Walt said. “Damn it, now you've got me doing it.”

Henry smiled. “It is the name he needs.”

“Sure it is.”

“You can doubt all you like. I am used to your skepticism.”

“You know he was a fighter pilot, right?” Branch asked. “Went by the name Apollo. What if that's the name he's supposed to use?”

Henry looked at Walt. Walt looked back at him. Neither of them had a response to the interruption or the new addition to their number. Perhaps it was only that they did not have a polite one. Henry did not know.

“How'd you know about the call sign?”

“It's in the file Ruby got. Seems he was kind of a big deal, on the fast track—a captain already and squad leader—and then he chucked it all, becoming a lawyer, of all things,” Branch said, disgust on his face. “Who'd give up flying for that?”

“A man who has lost half of his soul,” Henry answered, and everyone just looked at him.

* * *

Vic pulled up in front of her house and parked the truck behind Sean's car. At least that was here. He wasn't answering her calls, and she didn't know where he was. He shouldn't be at work, since he had the next two days off, just as she was supposed to, but where she went in to work, he might not have. Or he could have because he was pissed. She didn't even know what he would do.

Adama looked up, his eyes taking a minute to focus on the house. “Nice place.”

“It's just a house.”

Adama fixed her with a look that was too understanding for his current state. “Not a home.”

She got out, slamming the door behind her. She bet Adama was laughing, but she didn't stick around to find out for sure. She went up to the house, pushing open the front door and stepping inside. The place was quiet. Great. That could mean just about anything, but none of it good.

“Sean?”

No answer, not that she expected one. She knew he was still mad, and if he was stewing in the house, he wasn't about to say anything until she gave him no other choice. She shouldn't have fought with him after she got back, but he kept pushing about the blood on her hands, and she couldn't begin to explain that.

She made her way down the hall to their bedroom, her progress halted in the doorway as her stomach tried to jump up into her throat. She couldn't breathe. This wasn't happening. “Sean? Sean, answer me.”

She would have run to him, forgotten training and everything else, if Conoy hadn't been standing next to the bed. “Get away from him. Now.”

“He is a hindrance, keeping you from your true path. This is your destiny, and he cannot be allowed to stop it.”

“He's my husband,” Vic hissed, pulling out her gun and pointing it at him. “I shot you once. I'll do it again.”

“You care for him.”

“Yeah, I do,” Vic said. As strained as things were between her and Sean, she hadn't stopped caring about him. He still mattered to her. “If you killed him, I will kill you. Are we clear on that? Because that's what's about to happen. I'm going to kill you.”

“You say that, but it is not the truth. The truth is that you love me. I have seen it.”

“No,” she said, figuring that she could get away with shooting him even if he wasn't armed and hadn't moved. Look at what he'd done to Sean. That was the work of a butcher, not a man. This guy was completely insane.

“If you wish him to live, come with me. Let me show you how things must be, and when you have seen them, you will understand.”

“I'm not going anywhere with you.”

“Then he will die,” Conoy said, moving toward the bed. She squeezed the trigger, and he whirled, rushing toward her. She fired again, but he didn't stop, slamming her up against the wall, knocking the gun out of her hand, and closing his fingers around her throat. Damn. At least now she understood how Adama had been blindsided by Conoy's attack. “I would have given him mercy despite what he has done to your path, but you chose not to allow it. His death is your doing.”

She shook her head, clawing at his hand.

“Why do you fight me?” Conoy asked, sounding almost... hurt. “I love you, Starbuck. I wish you understood that and saw what I saw.”

“I don't... know much about... love,” Vic admitted, since her relationships—Ed, Sean, Walt—they were all screwed up, “but I know... this isn't... love.”

“Yes, it is. I will show you. You will understand when I'm done.”


	5. Further Connections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few conversations in the respective aftermaths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where even more of canon blends in, but it's still not like it's any surprise. Just... a little disappointing because I prefer to keep some characters alive, but this one fit so well it was impossible to talk myself out of it.
> 
> And I may have done a little bit of what some would call character bashing, but I don't think I was that bad. I did say she was misguided, right? That's not too bad an insult, and I think it is true. At the very least, I liked her a lot more before a certain subplot was introduced.

* * *

“Sheriff Longmire, we need to talk.”

“Commander Adama,” Walt acknowledged the other man, though he didn't need more than those words to know what had brought this man to him. Damn it. He should have stayed. He knew Henry could handle this part on his own.

“Bill,” the other man corrected. “I'm not a commander here, much as I might want to have a few troops to order around.”

Walt bet he did. He'd be leading the search himself if he could. “Your son left the hospital.”

“With your deputy Moretti.”

Walt almost swore. What the hell was Vic thinking? She knew better than that. Adama was half dead, and she was a walking target. She had no business helping him leave the hospital. They were both going to end up dead at this rate.

“Idiots.”

“Can't expect a man with half a soul to act rationally,” Henry said, and Walt gave him a look, but he saw Laura nodding in agreement.

“Much as I hate to admit it, he's got a point. Apollo never did see clearly when it came to Starbuck,” Tigh said with a grunt of disapproval. “Frakking Achilles heel if there ever was one.”

“Branch, call Vic. Keep calling until you get a hold of her. Don't stop. Tell Ferg to drive by her place. Pick up her husband if she's not there. He could be a target as well.”

“She's married?” Laura asked, a look of horror passing over her features. “Oh, gods.”

Walt looked her. “What do you know?”

“Conoy crippled Starbuck's husband. He was some kind of ball player, thought he was hot stuff,” Tigh snorted. “Wasn't much left of him when that frakker got through with him, poor bastard. Nine years of rehab and he can feed himself again. Whoop-de-frakking do.”

Walt put a hand to his head. He'd gotten the sense that Lee Adama was involved with Starbuck, but she had a husband? Why wasn't this man listed as one of Conoy's victims? What the hell was wrong with these people that none of them seemed capable of giving more than a half-truth?

He fixed Bill with a pointed look. “Was your son having an affair with her?”

His wife was the one to answer. She shook her head. “No.”

“You only have his word for that,” Tigh told her. “Might not mean squat.”

“No, Saul,” Laura disagreed. “The way Lee talked, the way he reacted to comments people made—he never acted on what he felt. I'm not even sure Kara knew before she died. Don't snort at me. You're not the one who held him after Kat's funeral and heard his anguish—I lost count of how many times he asked me if it would have been different if he'd only told her. Somehow he seemed to believe if he had, he could have spared not only her but every woman Leoben hurt after her and Sam, too.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It does if Conoy sees the two of them as a connected pair,” Henry said, and the others frowned at him. Walt was more used to his friend's suggestions and how his mind worked, so he almost understood it. Hell, he could expand on it.

“The way you said their names—Starbuck and Apollo. Almost like it's one word. Your son gave up flying after she died, left the Navy. Factor in how Conoy had to harass your son each time he killed. How he couldn't leave him out of the deaths. How he claimed killing Adama first would clear the path for Vic...” Walt shook his head. He didn't like this. He didn't trust Adama, but that didn't mean the man deserved to die. “It may be that the reason he hasn't stopped killing is because he made a mistake the first time.”

The elder Adama understood, pain visible in his eyes. “He should have killed Lee when he killed Kara.”

* * *

“She won't see it, you frakking idiot. She's _not_ Kara,” Adama said, and Vic used Leoben's surprise to free herself, shoving him back. Adama fired, and it hit off-center, knocking Conoy back but not stopping him. He shook his head, seeming of all things _disappointed_ —as he backed away from them. Adama's second shot hit the wall near Conoy's head, and the madman laughed. Vic rubbed her throat and gave him a look, but any comments about his poor shooting died as she she saw blood on his new shirt.

Damn. He shouldn't even be on his feet.

“Give me the gun,” she said, and Adama passed it to her, turning to brace himself on the wall. She turned to aim at Conoy only to have no one to shoot. “What the hell? I shot him. You shot him. How the hell does he keep escaping?”

“Drugs,” Adama answered. “And... body armor. Pretty sure about that now. You... the husband. Is he...?”

She swallowed, moving toward the bed and to Sean's still form. She winced even as she saw his chest rise and fall. There. Again. He was still breathing. He was a mess, but he was alive. Alive. “We need an ambulance. You call. I'm going—”

“Don't,” Adama said. “You go out there, he has the advantage. He gets you by surprise, and it's all over. Force him to come back after us.”

“He's got two points of entry,” Vic said, picking up the phone only to find the landline was severed. She opened the drawer, hunting for Sean's cell since she must have left hers in the truck like an idiot. “It's not a choke point.”

“It's better than walking into one of his traps, trust me on that,” Adama told her, and she believed him. Conoy was a vicious bastard, but it wasn't just that. His insanity was worse. The idea that he thought this was _love_ sickened her.

She shook it off, using Sean's cell to call it in. She didn't know what to make of herself as she spoke. _Man down._ Like Sean wasn't her husband and this wasn't her fault, even if she hadn't chosen to be stalked by Conoy. _Need an ambulance._ Even with one, it might be too late for Sean. She didn't know that she could do anything here to help, and she should be screaming and freaking out about it, but she was numb and strange and too far away from everything.

“He was fast. Too damn fast,” Vic said, still trying to make sense of what had just happened to her. “I've dealt with my fair share of criminals, but he's something else. Seems inhuman.”

“Not going to argue with that.”

Vic looked back at Adama. “How bad are you? Damn it, I knew we shouldn't have left the hospital. You're almost more of a mess than Sean is.”

Adama leaned against the wall. “I'm fine. Just annoyed. Still haven't learned to compensate properly for my shoulder.”

“Your shoulder?”

He nodded. “Got shot on a case. Terrorists. They were holding a room hostage, and I got in the way. I heard it wasn't even them, that it was friendly fire. I don't know. Never went looking for the report. Didn't need to go casting blame. Didn't care about anything except them saying I might never be able to use it again.”

“That bad?”

“So they tell me. Most of the time it's fine, but as you can see, it frakked my aim good.”

Vic nodded, though she figured his injuries were also to blame for the poor shot he'd taken earlier. The thing with his shoulder could be all in his head. “Do you think he's still waiting for us outside?”

“Hard to say,” Adama began. He closed his eyes. “On the one hand, he wants to be close. He needs to know when his victims die. So he'll want to be sure Sean dies here. And your need to get him to a doctor could mean that Leoben would catch you trying to get your husband help. He would like that, too. Still, he has to know you'd come out armed, that you'd called the cavalry, and that this place will be full of police and emergency personnel soon. He won't want to be here for that. He has to disappear, come back at a moment of his choosing, and get you when you're vulnerable.”

“How many times has he done that to you?” Vic asked, forcing herself into the bathroom and almost jumping at the sight of a towel hanging on the wall. That wasn't Conoy, but she'd forgotten the third entry point and just how screwed they were. Leoben could come back from anywhere.

“Isn't once more than enough?”

“Of course it is,” Vic said, grabbing every bit of her first aid kit she could and carrying it back to the bed. “Still, he's been playing this game with you for a while now, right?”

“About ten years now,” Adama admitted. He shook his head. “You know what the crazy thing is? Kara and I used to laugh about this.”

* * *

“Saying that just gives us another reason to find Lee before Leoben does,” Laura said, trying to keep her voice calm among all the others. She did not know what else to do—Bill needed her to be strong, and she should be able to keep some distance—Lee wasn't her son by blood. Still, she could almost argue that by choice their bond was stronger, that because it's not an obligation but a reasoned and feeling decision, the emotion was deeper, but she didn't dare do that now.

Longmire nodded. “Agreed. As far as I know, your son is unfamiliar with this area. That true?”

Bill nodded. “To my knowledge, Lee's never been here before. It surprised us when he said this was where he'd chosen to spend his leave, but then Lee never does anything without a reason.”

“We just disagreed on what that reason was,” Saul added. He gave Longmire a derisive look before refusing to supply his reason, which was just as well with Laura, because as much as she knew Lee was hurting and had been for a long time, he was not suicidal. He hadn't come here to die.

Though if he knew his death would stop Leoben, Lee would go happily, she was sure of that, much as it distressed her.

“So there's nowhere here he'd know to go.”

“I'm assuming he left that up to your deputy,” Bill said. “We did check his hotel room, but he hasn't been there. Not sure where he is now, since he's not answering his phone. He's armed, at least, but that's not much.”

“In his state, that's dangerous.”

Laura snorted, shaking her head at Saul's assertion. “Lee got Bill's stubbornness along with his ability to be a good soldier. If he has to use his weapon, he will.”

Saul was unimpressed. “And I suppose he won't miss, either?”

“I didn't say that. Lee's aim is lousy when he drinks or when he's hurting.”

Bill eyed her with suspicion. “Since when do you go shooting with my son?”

“I don't,” Laura answered her husband's question with a smile. “We play darts.”

Bill laughed, putting his arm around her, and she sighed with contentment, enjoying the moment. “You never stop surprising me.”

“I hope I never do,” Laura told him honestly.

Longmire cleared his throat, cutting off the awkward intimacy of that moment. “Back up some. You said that you were with him after the funeral. The one for Kat. She was the reservist, wasn't she? How did he know her?”

“She served under my command,” Bill said, and Longmire's expression darkened. “She did fly with Lee and Kara once. They did USO shows, and Kat was selected to join them once. Gods, that was a lifetime ago...”

“Sounds like you remember plenty.”

“Well, at the risk of sounding too much like a proud papa, Kat came back all smiles and stories from that detail. She swore up and down she learned more from Kara and Lee in the time she spent with them than her whole time in flight school. She said she loved flying even more because of them. She and Kara bonded. They were competitive, but they made each other better.” Bill shook his head. “Losing Kara shook Kat, too, though she took longer to leave than Lee did. She eventually chose the reserves, though, and had just transferred when... when she died.”

“Was your son telling the truth about what they were like? Personality-wise?”

Bill nodded. “Kat was a younger version of Kara. Less refined, if possible, but she was a good kid. She did remind me of Kara, almost every day. I used to find it funny until Lee said that had to be why Leoben picked her. He was a mess at her funeral, that's true. Leoben left her body where his client would get blamed for her death, and it all went to hell from there.”

Longmire took that in, but before he actually did anything with it, another deputy approached them. “We've got a problem. It's Vic.”

“How bad?”

“She called in to dispatch. For an ambulance.”

“Lee,” Laura breathed out, clutching Bill's arm. “Oh, gods...”

* * *

“How can you laugh about something like this?”

Lee grimaced. “That sounds wrong, doesn't it? It's just... When Kara and I were stationed on the _Atlantia,_ we did maneuvers for the USO shows. Kara loved being able to show off. I just liked flying with her. It was... Being in the air was freedom, something I'd never known until I got into that cockpit, for all that Dad had shown me dozens of planes over the years and I had a private license from the moment I was old enough to hold one. Even that didn't compare to when I was up with her. Everything was different then. Charged with energy—we never seemed to get tired. It just carried us on waves, and we'd have to be ordered or out of fuel to come back. It was one of those... things. People called it part of our legend. Sounds egotistical, doesn't it?”

“Maybe a little.”

“I can stop talking.”

Moretti shook her head. “No, don't. I can use the distraction from... this, and that way I know you're still alive without having to look at you every two seconds to be sure.”

Lee nodded. “Sounds reasonable. So... USO shows. We had a big audience, and we got attention. Lots of it. That was what led us to our very own stalkers.”

“Stalkers? Plural?”

“She had one. I had one. We used to joke about starting a club,” Lee answered. “Though... mine was harmless. Dee wasn't a bad person, just... misguided. She thought she loved me—what she loved was an idea of me, not who I actually was—and she insisted she could love me even though she knew my heart was Kara's. She actually said that. I laughed it off at the time, thanking her and saying I was flattered, but it wasn't going to happen.”

“That another line you couldn't cross?”

“Moretti, Dee was screwed up. Her fiance died, she fixated on me because of my call sign, and she had no idea who I was. If I'd gone along with that, it would have been worse than taking advantage of her. Not that she didn't try the reverse, but it still would have been wrong.”

“Damn, that's a lot of blood. I thought you were bad, but this...”

“Head wounds bleed more. It might not be as bad as you think,” Lee offered. “Though with Sam it was. Gods, it was awful.”

“Who the hell is Sam?”

“Kara's husband. Leoben tried to kill him, too. Would have if she hadn't shown up and interrupted and paid for it.”

“You didn't mention him as one of the victims.” Moretti turned back to Lee with accusation on her face. “You didn't mention Kara, either. Walt's right about it, though. You came here for me, not because you thought Conoy was here.”

“He was in Philadelphia.”

She stilled. “What?”

“I still run facial recognition whenever I can. I found him in photographs of you at the trial where you testified against your fellow officers. He was watching you then.”

“And you didn't think this was information I needed to know?” Moretti demanded. “That trial was over a year ago.”

“You transferred before I found the photos, and no one knew where. And how much do you think you would have believed if I'd called you up and said, 'oh, by the way, you're being stalked by a man who killed my wingman?'”

“Didn't you think maybe you should get others involved?”

He snorted. “People think I see Leoben in the mirror, standing behind me. More than half of the people I deal with think he's someone I made up because I was jealous of Kara being with Sam and I killed her because I couldn't have her, then broke and created this fantasy of a killer who stalked her and other women.”

“Except he's real. He was here. I shot him. Twice.”

“Yes, but he keeps coming. He's so fast it doesn't make sense, right? If you hadn't shown up last night, I'd be facing the same accusations of faking this whole thing.” Lee looked down at his hands. “Moretti?”

“What?”

“I swear it didn't take me over a year to come warn you. I only found out about the pictures last week, and I came as soon as I found out where you'd moved. I would have told you the first day I got here, even before I talked to Longmire, but you—”

“I was on vacation. With Sean. We'd agreed to no phones and all of that, get away, rekindle the magic or whatever the hell it is we're lacking these days.” She sighed. “I know we just called. That it hasn't been that long since I asked for an ambulance, but it feels like too long, like I'm only delaying the inevitable.”

“If your husband is even half as stubborn as Sam was, he'll make it,” Lee said, though he didn't need the reminders. In the end, he didn't hate Sam, and that was hard to accept, especially since even if Kara were alive, she'd still be with the other man.

“I didn't figure you for an optimist.”

“I'm not.”


	6. Setting a Trap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lee and Moretti set a new trap for Leoben.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In retrospect, I picked the wrong name for this story. It should have been "the trap" or something like that.
> 
> I did work in the explanation of Lee and Laura's inside joke, loved that.
> 
> And maybe someday I'll write down part of this from another view because I know that there is a story there that would spoil this one, so I might do it as an aside like I keep telling myself I will with my other long AU where Lee disappeared and ended up on _Pegasus._

* * *

“We'll take care of him,” the EMT promised Vic, and she nodded, but she felt numb. She didn't know if she believed it, and she might even feel like she didn't want the words to be true. She didn't want Sean dead, no, but this whole thing was messed up, and she didn't know what to think anymore.

A hand touched her arm, and Vic would have jumped if she didn't already know who it was.

It should have been Walt, and it wasn't. He hadn't gotten to her house yet. She knew he'd be here. Ferg was, but he was lost, and she knew it. The man was good, and he was a sweetheart, but he did not know what to do in a moment like this. No one did.

Maybe Walt. Maybe someone else, but not Ferg, much as she did like him.

“What is it about you, Adama?” 

“You mean, why does trouble follow me everywhere I go?” he asked, giving her a wry grin. “I used to blame it on Kara, but that stopped working when she died.”

Vic gave him a half-smile as she watched Sean get loaded into the back of the ambulance.

“Bit of advice?” Adama began. “Don't stay with him out of guilt. It's not worth it.”

She looked at him sharply. “Excuse me? What would you know about it?”

“A lot, actually.” Adama put a hand over his side, waving the EMT off again. He kept refusing to get looked at, and she was starting to think that if they saw how bad he was, he'd be dragged into that ambulance with her husband. “I was dating a woman named Gianne when Kara and I met. She... She told me she was pregnant, I panicked—I'd only _just_ started at Annapolis—and then by the time my head was around the idea, the baby was gone.”

She noticed the word choice there. “She _told_ you she was pregnant?”

“Kara always said she thought Gianne made it up to keep me.” He admitted with a grimace. “At first, I didn't believe it, but I've become more cynical over the years. I never saw the test, never went to the doctor with her, not when she first told me or after the miscarriage. The whole thing could have been faked. I'm not sure. I just know... at the time, I stayed with her because I felt I owed her, because I was guilty over panicking the way I did, and I wanted to do the right thing. That wasn't it. Not by a long shot.”

“Why not?”

“Kara married Sam. I lost my chance to be with her, and it wasn't like it spared any of us. Sam told me that even up to the end, he didn't trust her with me. He was convinced we were having an affair.”

“You sound angry.”

“I was. I am. Kara and I never crossed that line. However close we came, whatever we felt, it was something we didn't do, and I am damn sick of being accused of it. I know there were times I was weak enough I might have done it. Same with her. We didn't. We respected her vows. To have him doubt that... It was a slap in the face.”

Vic nodded. She could see that. “What now?”

“Regroup. Find a new place to set a trap for Leoben. Wait.”

“You don't think maybe the hospital is a better idea?”

He snorted. “You call that a trap? That's more like an invitation for afternoon tea.”

She laughed. He had a point there. She eyed him, part of her mind trying to figure out how they were going to get past Ferg. “What is it about you? Why am I letting you plan out our next move? You should be in a hospital bed, and your judgment is beyond compromised.”

“You're asking why you trust me?” Adama asked, amused. “I suppose it could be because I'm the 'expert' when it comes to Leoben. Or...”

“Or?”

“Kara and I had a connection that was... instant. Unpleasant as hell because I met her when she was dating my brother, but we ignored it, went separate ways, I thought, and then when we hit Annapolis... Well, all bets would have been off if I hadn't been in that mess with Gianne. Still... if you're like her, maybe it's the same thing.”

“We're not the same person.”

“I know that,” he said, pained. “Believe me, I _do_ know. You're not her. You look alike. You even sound alike, but you're not her. You... just have similar tells.”  
For some reason, Vic smiled at that. “All right, Adama. You have a battle plan for getting out of here without them stopping us?”

He shook off the memory and nodded. “Yeah, but I get the feeling even if we live through this, I'll never be welcome in Absaroka county again.”

Vic just laughed.

* * *

Ferg looked so apologetic that Walt felt sorry for him. He trusted the man, as Ferg was one of his most loyal deputies, a steady man with a good heart. Unfortunately for him, that made it all too easy for a devious agent and a rogue friend to take advantage of him.

“I'm sorry, Walt. They were here. I saw them. I spoke to Vic before her husband went in the ambulance. Then she and that agent said something about the bedroom and taking another look, and I thought maybe I should because Vic shouldn't have to see that blood again, and when I came back out, they were gone.”

Walt nodded. “It's all right, Ferg.”

“But Walt, they were here and—”

“And if Vic had decided to give us the slip, it wouldn't have mattered who was here or what they were doing,” Walt told him. “She's gone, she took Adama with her, and we'll just have to wait and see if she starts acting with some sense here.”

“Sense was never Kara's strong point,” Bill Adama said, and Walt wondered if he had made a mistake in letting the man come, not that he would have been able to stop him, not when his son was in the thick of this and possibly fighting for his life again. “Used to be that was Lee's job.”

“You say that like Lee is acting completely irrationally,” his wife said, shaking her head. “The facts are that Leoben stalks women he feels are like Kara and that he involves Lee in their deaths. We all believe part of his plan is to make sure Lee dies first. That said, the best way we all have of catching Leoben is one none of us care for—dangling them out as bait.”

“They have no back up,” Bill said. “If they had back up, it would be different, but to keep going off on their own is insane and stupid, and Lee knows better than this.”

“You have to let him fight his own battles, Bill. You can't fight this one for him. No one can.”

Walt turned to Ferg. “Go over your report again. What did Vic say happened?”

“Um...” Ferg paused, pulling out his notebook. “She said she walked in to find Conoy in the bedroom with Sean. He'd already started... um... hurting him. She told him to back off, he didn't, and she fired. He rushed her, knocked her into the wall. Adama showed up, distracted him, and she was able to fight him off. Then Adama shot him once, missed a second time, and Conoy ran when Adama handed her the gun.”

Walt frowned, trying to picture it in his head. 

Branch looked at Ferg, doing his own share of frowning. “Did she say why he missed or for that matter, why _she_ did? I've seen Vic shoot. She shouldn't have missed, not at that distance.”

“Adams—Adama—which is it again?” Ferg asked, then continued on before anyone could answer his question. “He said something about drugs and body armor, but I don't know how much I'd trust that because he was looking kind of bad and his clothes were bloody but he refused treatment from the paramedics.”

“Some of his clothes already had blood on them,” Laura reminded her husband before he could get set off again. 

Walt turned to Henry. “Can you track Conoy from here?”

“Possibly, though last time his trail was... incomplete,” Henry said. Walt nodded. The other crime scene was a dead end because Leoben had doubled back and then too much traffic had obscured anything else of use. “This should be different. This house is isolated.”

“Find Conoy. I want this bastard before he goes after them again.”

* * *

“This is not your brightest idea ever.”

“I know,” Lee said, leaning against the wall. He sat down wearily and closed his eyes, needing a moment to let the throb in his side dull down to more of an ache. “I fully expect to pay for this one and not from Leoben.”

Moretti nodded. “I should have talked you out of this, but you don't know the area well enough to scout another place, and frankly, Walt's place is where you want to go to set a trap like this. Well, I think I might still have used my own house if I could have, but it wasn't an option.”

Lee tapped his fingers against the floor, still trying to fit together the events of the day. Something was nagging at him, and once he placed that, he'd know what to do next. Being here only bought them a bit of time. It wasn't a solution.

“How long do you think it will be before your boss thinks of his own house as your likely target?”

“A while. Long enough, I hope, though if Ferg remembers that Sean's car has built in GPS, it'll be over before Walt realizes his place is the best for a standoff.” Moretti sat down next to him. “We should probably do this with back up.”

“Stings don't work on Leoben. He sees them in his stream,” Lee muttered. He grimaced. “Or something. I haven't figured out how he knows what he does, but the last few times I've tried to work with others to set up traps, it didn't go very well.”

“Adding to everyone thinking you made Conoy up.”

“Yes. They just played right into his hand.”

“Okay, then, so you and me. How do we stop a man we've shot three times who keeps coming and has some kind of delusional faith that won't let him die?”

“Let him have me.”

Moretti hit him. “Are you insane? You're already wounded. Giving you to him is basically suicide.”

“I know,” Lee agreed, opening his eyes to face her, “but I don't see another option. If he's allowed to think he's got me, he'll be distracted. Ideally, we'd let him think he knocked you down or out so that he'd take his time killing me. That's the only chance you'd have to make a real move, and it does mean sacrificing me to do it. If it works, I'll be fine. If it doesn't... you haven't lost much.”

She shook her head. “How the hell did Kara put up with you if you were like this?”

“I wasn't like this with her. She... brought out the best in me. The worst, too, but Kara could make me smile without even trying, and I don't know that I've managed many smiles since she's been gone, not real ones, anyway.”

“I almost wish I'd known you when she was still alive.”

“I wish you'd known her. You'd have liked her,” Lee told her, and then he put his hand to his head, rubbing at his temple as he tried to calm his mind down from the leap it had just made. “When you were at the crime scenes... did you see anyone watching?”

“I looked for Conoy. He wasn't there.”

“No, not him. Someone else. Tall. Short dark hair. Grown out from regulation...”

“Who are you talking about? Was there another victim besides the husband that you failed to mention, because this isn't—”

“Sometimes, at my worst and most paranoid, I think Leoben killed my brother because he was involved with Kara before.”

Moretti swallowed. “You think he'd go through all my past boyfriends, too?”

“I don't know. Unlikely, since you left most if not all of them behind in Philly, I assume, but he could have gone for them before coming here. I didn't look too close into your personal life. I tried to find a connection between you and Leoben, didn't, and if I hadn't already known he was going after you, that would have been enough to convince me.”

“I sense a but somewhere.”

“I... It's probably nothing. I have been hours without pain meds, and my side is getting bad, so my judgment's questionable at best—”

“Adama. Out with it. Now.”

“No one's really seen Kara's best friend Helo in years. Karl. I almost always forget his real name is Karl. He was at Annapolis with us. Flew with us. He and I lost touch a long time ago, probably all the way back when I decided I wanted to bury myself in the law after Kara's death.”

“So you think he's dead?”

Lee shook his head. “No, I... I think I saw him today. In the crowd. That... makes no sense.”

* * *

“Someday I would like to learn how you do this.”

Henry looked up with amusement, not sure he was surprised to find Laura Adama standing beside him as he attempted to track. The others had kept their distance, even Walt, but curiosity seemed to win over her faster than distrust and fear won over her companions. They were focused on the other pieces and other fights—which of their people was more irresponsible and which of them deserved the blame, how badly Adama was injured and if he would survive.

“I would be willing to tell you if you explain something to me.”

She looked at him. “Oh? And what is that?”

“Why does your stepson call you the president?”

She laughed, and Henry listened to it, enjoying the sound. She had the sort of laughter that seemed almost musical, something that the wind would carry and share far beyond her own reach. “Oh, now that is a long story. It goes back to when Lee worked as a public defender.”

“I had heard he was a lawyer. I did not realize he worked as a public defender.”

“I knew from the moment I met him that his job would chew him up and spit him out. Lords, he was so young and idealistic then, even after losing Kara. It would have been worse, I think, if he'd been on the opposite side, if he'd gone to be a district attorney. He would have had to compromise so much, and he would have hated it. And himself,” she answered, stopping to pick up a wild flower growing near the house.

Henry nodded, thinking much would have been the same if Cady had chosen that path. She lacked one now, but she would find her way. Perhaps she should speak more to Adama later, when this was over.

“Lee and I met when I was working on the mayor's committee for education,” Laura went on, smiling as she did, turning the flower around in her hands. “One of my fellow committee members was involved in some... less than savory activities that involved a client of Lee's. He came to ask me questions in preparation for his defense. I was... perhaps not as helpful as I could have been.”

Henry followed Conoy's path further into the woods, stopping when the trail became harder to see. She followed after him. “And yet you two are close now.”

“Lee reminded me that I had never gone into politics looking to gain power or keep the corrupt in their places but to help the children I taught. I wanted to move away from standardized tests and back into real learning. I was losing that, but he pushed. He made me care about the boy he was defending, and I told him what I knew of my associate's less than above board dealings, which wasn't much but enough to give him the doubt he needed to free his client. When we met after the trial, he told me he hadn't liked me much at first, but I was one of the better politicians he'd ever known and if I ever ran for president, I'd have his vote.”

“A charming thought.”

“Oh, I actually found it rather insulting,” she admitted, still smiling fondly. “Still, I asked him if I could hire him as an advisor, and he stared at me—oh, Lords, I will never forget that look. It was one of the single best moments of my life, which told me two things—Lee was special and my life was pathetic. I asked him to keep me honest, and he did. We had weekly meetings for coffee. He'd discuss his cases, I'd talk about education, and then one day lines crossed.”

“You slept with your stepson?”

She laughed again. “Oh, wow. Now that's a rumor I haven't heard for years. No, I didn't, though that was the impression most of my colleagues had. It was actually quite amusing for me, embarrassing for him. He was about to back out of our weekly meetings when... when Leoben reentered his life and everything went to hell.”

Henry found the trail again and started forward. “That is not the story I asked for.”

“No, but I suppose you need it to understand,” she said. “Leoben left the body in the home of that boy we bonded over. Perhaps he felt that Lee was not allowed to have a woman in his life, even if it was not romantic, or perhaps he just wanted it to hurt more. I don't know. I know that's when I met Bill, and just like with Lee, we got off on the wrong foot. He had come down hard on Lee, not just for what his client supposedly did—Kat was a friend, family to him because she'd served under him—and the fact that Lee was still willing to defend the scum accused of killing her—well, that was an unforgivable sin in Bill's eyes. I forced him to back off, and in the middle of it, Lee starts laughing and said, 'see, I told you you'd make a good president. Only a presidential order could make the commander back down.'”

“Ah. That sounds familiar.”

“I assume that your friend Longmire is in many ways the same,” she agreed. “He seems like a good man. Of course, Bill can't see that since he's a 'threat' to his son, but he will after this is over.”

“Perhaps.”

“You say that like I will give him an option to see it any other way.”

Henry laughed. “You know, I do believe I know what both your stepson and your husband see in you, Madame President.”

* * *

Vic reassessed Walt's house, trying to find the best position for this trap they've set. They're not in any sort of tactical position, and they both knew it. He didn't look likely to move, and if she was honest about it, she figured he wasn't all that likely to last until Conoy sprung the trap. She should have forced him back to the hospital, should have left him there, but if she had... Wouldn't Sean be dead and she be in the hands of that psychopath?

She wasn't sure.

She walked toward Walt's bathroom, pulling out some of his medical supplies and loading them into her arms, carrying them back to where Adama was sitting. She set them beside him, preparing herself for what she would see when she worked his shirt up and saw what she was actually working with and just how bad off he was.

She fixed him with a hard look. “It does if he was working with Conoy.”

Adama frowned. He blinked a few times before looking at her. “What? You're not talking about me again, are you? I thought... Thought that was settled.”

“It is,” Vic insisted. “As much as I shouldn't and you look like crap, I trust you, Adama. You're going to see us through this, and we _will_ finish this. Now let me see those wounds so I can make sure you're together enough to pull this off.”

He caught her hand as she went for the bottom of his shirt. “No. Not until you tell me what you meant. Who do you think is working with Leoben? My father? Tigh? Your husband?”

She sighed. She should have waited to mention that. “That friend you talked about.”

“Helo?” Adama's shock surprised her. He should have considered this, but it was so far removed from his mind, he couldn't see it at all. “Never. He was beyond loyal to Kara. They were like siblings. So close I was jealous of them and I was the guy she was supposedly cheating on her husband with. It's... It's stupid now. It always was.”

Vic didn't know if he was right, loyal, or being blindingly stupid right now. “But you saw him.”

“I saw someone that _reminded_ me of him. It didn't necessarily mean I saw Helo.” Adama shifted, still resisting her attempt to get at his cuts. “It's been years since I saw him, and it wasn't him.”

“You're telling yourself that because you want to believe it,” Vic countered. She shook her head. “I've worked with dirty cops, remember? I know what it's like not to want to believe it. Still, you can't dismiss it. Who else knew enough about you and Kara to pull this off?”

“Not Helo,” Adama ground out. “It would never have been him.”

* * *

“Something's missing.”

“I take it you don't mean your friend that's currently tracking the psychopath with my wife for company,” Bill said, reacting to Longmire's words. The other man grunted, but Bill knew enough to interpret that. “What are you thinking?”

“Your son is not a stupid man, is he?”

“I should be insulted by that, but I won't be. No, Lee's not stupid. He's stubborn as hell and a bit mule-headed about what's right and what's not. And if things were different, you'd have come to him for answers about Conoy. He'd have been the expert in that situation.”

Longmire nodded. “That's what I thought. So he knows he needs to set a trap, but he doesn't know this area.”

“Lee would have done his research, but no, we've never been here before, and he wouldn't know the area well enough to set any kind of trap. Maybe if he'd scouted a place in advance, but I don't see how that could be the case. He just got here, and it would have taken longer to find one, at least for me. That's not saying I'm slow. I think Lee would have been more deliberate and picky. He's a stickler for details. Used to annoy the hell out of me.”

“About what I figured,” Longmire agreed. “That means Vic had to pick wherever it was they went to set this trap of theirs.”

“And you should be able to figure out where she chose because you know her.”

“That's the trouble. I can't think of a single good place she'd pick.”

Bill looked at him. “But you know where you'd pick.”

“Of course I do.” Longmire swore under his breath. “I know where they are.”

* * *

Moretti was quiet, still fuming over their last exchange. Lee was too tired to be angry, but he wouldn't back off from his position—he knew Helo. He knew that man would never hurt Kara, and he'd never ally with a man who had, not even to catch him. Helo was a good man, a loyal man, the kind f loyal that got him screwed over more than once. He wasn't working with Leoben. “You should take up another post. If we're too close, this won't work.”

“How do you know he'll come?”

Lee shrugged. “I suppose I don't. I just... I figure it will be as soon as it gets dark. He seems to like that. It gives him an advantage. I don't know what it is. The drugs he takes, maybe. I don't know for sure. He always fought like he was something more than human, but I was never willing to pursue that angle. I didn't need to add fuel to the fire and get myself locked up as a crazy person. I was too close to that as it was. For the first few months, I saw Kara everywhere. I couldn't go up in the air, couldn't fly. I went to the law, figuring I couldn't hurt anyone there. My mistake.”

Moretti rose. “We still don't have a good position here. Walt might, but we don't.”

“I know. I'm not sure it matters.”

She swore. Loudly. Enough to make him think that she was right in his ear and not halfway across the room. “I just fixed those bandages. You better not die on me now.”

“That's not what I meant.” Lee looked at the window. “It won't take long now—either your people or mine will come or Leoben will. There isn't a lot of time left. And I think if Leoben has any idea how you feel about Longmire, he'll come.”

“You don't think he'll come after Walt first?”

“Whatever you have isn't... as obvious as some other things, as what was between me and Kara. And I'm with you—that's going to shift the balance he has, and it will unsettle him. I'm hoping it makes him make a mistake.”

“That's a lot of assumptions to make.”

He snorted, leaning back against the wall. “All I've got left are assumptions. This works or it doesn't, and when that's all said and done, I don't know where I'll be or what I'll be thinking, but I figure it won't—”

He stopped at the sound of a shot, seeing her go down across the room. He stared, trying to assess that even as he forced himself forward. If he could get to Moretti, he might be able to help, but it didn't make sense. Yes, Leoben was supposed to come after them, was supposed to disable Moretti and come after him, but shooting her wasn't Leoben's style. This felt wrong. Something was off, but it Longmire or anyone else was out there, why shoot Moretti? He wouldn't go that far for trespassing, even if this was his home. 

Lee's distraction was a mistake. He knew it as soon as the door slammed against the wall, and he knew better than this in the first place, but he wasn't on the top of his game, not with the wound on his side or the confusion in his head. He thought he heard Moretti cursing, hoped she was moving and not about to bleed out because Leoben was on him. He wouldn't get free this time.

“You have lived long enough, Apollo. I have seen your destiny, and it ends here.”

“So... inglorious,” Lee muttered, trying to get Leoben off of him. The other man pushed down on his wounds, the stitches tearing as Leoben clawed at it. “Gods, you are a frakking monster. What happened to shooting me and getting it over with? Why are you torturing me?”

“You have to know pain to understand the end.”

“I've been in pain for ten years because of you, you frakking bastard,” Lee said, but apparently Leoben was no longer in the mood to let him talk because he closed his hands around Lee's throat and started to choke. Lee yanked at them in desperation, trying to get free, but Leoben's hold was too strong. He couldn't win that way. He didn't need to waste more time trying.

He dropped a hand from his neck, reaching into his pocket for the knife he barely remembered grabbing, and he tried to force it into Leoben's gut, return the favor, but the knife wouldn't go through. Body armor confirmed.

Lee gathered up what was left of his strength and forced the knife up to Leoben's exposed throat. Blood splattered him, and he sucked in air as Leoben's hold loosened, allowing him to breathe again. He heard a shot and a thump, and he hoped that meant Leoben was dead, but he didn't know. He couldn't tell, couldn't even see right now. 

_Too late, he thought. All too late._

“Lee?” A woman's voice, but he couldn't focus on it. Everything was still dark despite the return of oxygen. “Lee, stay with me. I didn't go through all this to lose you now, damn it.”

“Sorry, Kara.” Lee grimaced, wondering if the sensation of wound on his side gushing out blood like a river was in his head or not. “I mean... Moretti. Sorry...”

“No, Lee, damn it, stay with me,” she said, and he thought about trying, but in the end, he was tired. Kara was gone. Leoben was gone. It was over, and he was ready for it to end.


	7. Full Circle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cleaning up the aftermath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endings are difficult. This one could have stretched into pages and pages of it, but I think if I do that alternate version I thought of, I'd add stuff in there. There is practically a whole alternate series of events that could be told. I think it's obvious what that is.
> 
> Or not. Sometimes leaving a crappy ending is at least better than not having an ending at all.

* * *

Vic hadn't heard the shot coming, hadn't seen anything, so the bullet that tore through her shoulder knocked her on her ass and then some. She groaned, struggling to get herself moving. She'd dropped her gun when she fell, and she had to push herself toward it, bad arm dragging across the ground, until she got it. When she did, she raised it and fired at Conoy, who was already choking the life out of Adama.

That part of their plan had worked a little _too_ well for her liking.

She saw Conoy fall and had to do the same herself, lowering the gun and almost falling back, her bad side no longer able to support her. She didn't think she could have done that if it hadn't been for knowing that someone else was in trouble, and she wasn't sure she could get back up again, even if she heard something moving across the room.

“You've got to be kidding me. How the hell are you not dead, Conoy?”

A gun went off, and she expected to be hit, but when she wasn't and Adama didn't cry out, she thought he might be dead. She dragged herself up, ready to fire a second time when she got a good look at the person leaning over Adama and stopped. 

“Now I know I've been shot. I'm seeing things.”

* * *

“If you knew where he would be, why did you waste my time tracking him?”

“Because I only realized later where Vic would set her trap. If her home wasn't already a crime scene, she might have tried there, and there was an off-chance she'd try the station, but it was less likely. I knew where I would go and—”

“And that was where Vic went as well,” Henry finished. “Yes, I can see that.”

“You're still angry.”

“As it was, you are fortunate I had such charming company. Laura kept me very entertained along our journey, and I believe that time was well spent, which almost makes up for wasting the rest.”

Walt grunted, shaking his head as he took the turn onto his driveway.

* * *

“Don't do this to me, Lee. Don't you dare quit now.”

Helo put a hand on Kara's shoulder, trying to calm her. That wouldn't be easy—Apollo was bleeding out under her hands—again—and she'd almost lost it the first time she'd been in this position. He couldn't let her do that now. She was going to be fine, because Apollo would be fine.

“You heard the sirens. They'll be here soon.”

“That's just the sheriff. This is his house.”

Karl shook his head. “I called for an ambulance as soon as we saw Leoben. Even if it was just to take his body away, we needed them.”

Kara's eyes drifted over to her double. Damn, that still got Karl, just how much this deputy looked like her. “You made the right call, Helo.”

“He's not gone yet.”

“I doubt he'd go knowing you're here,” Moretti said, still staring at her.

Kara just looked at her. “You don't know Lee.”

* * *

“Conoy!”

“He's dead, Walt. Hold your fire,” Vic called out to him, and Walt was both relieved and concerned. He heard something in her voice, but he saw more people in the house than just her. From here he counted three shadows. If Conoy was dead, why did he see three people?

“What the hell happened here?”

“Someone else's cavalry showed up before yours did,” Vic answered, and he watched as she made her way onto the porch flanked by a man Walt didn't recognize. He hadn't seen him in any case files. He wasn't part of the department. Who the hell was this?

“Helo?”

“Commander Adama,” the man greeted the others from the second vehicle—Walt knew there was little point in trying to stop the others from following him, even if he probably could have managed it, them not knowing this area like he did. “It's good to see you, sir.”

“Been a long time, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, it has,” the other man agreed. “And I'm pretty sure there's someone you'd rather see than me, sir, but I think it'll take a few of those EMTs to make that possible.”

Walt moved over to help Vic, even as she pushed away from the stranger. He took her good arm and led her across the yard. “You... You hit anywhere else? Anything else we should worry about?”

“Just this,” she answered. “Figure Conoy only did it to disable me, but it made a mess out of your floor. Sorry.”

“Yeah, we need to have a talk about you setting your trap in my house.”

“Not my best plan,” she said. “Not Adama's, either, but he was starting to lose it there toward the end. Not that he was wrong about Helo. He did see him.”

“Who the hell is this Helo?”

“Kara Thrace's best friend,” Vic answered. She closed her eyes and rode out the pain. The paramedic rushed toward her, but she shook him off. “Not me. Not first. Someone inside needs you a whole hell of a lot more.”

“Adama still alive?”

“Barely. He was right—Conoy went for him when he'd disabled me. Adama got him, I shot him, but I think the kill shot was someone else's,” Vic admitted. She winced. “Maybe I should have been a bit more selfish.”

“I might agree with that,” Walt told her, and she managed a smile.

* * *

Her hands were stained with blood. Literal this time, not like the past where it wasn't real, just a haunted sense, over and over again as people suffered and died in her place and she could not stop it. She had thought she could, and but she was wrong—she was always so damned wrong—and now that it was over, people were still hurting and it was still her fault.

She watched with numbness as the paramedics carried Lee out of the house, following him to the edge of the porch and a few steps into the driveway before remembering she'd never be allowed to go with him—not that she deserved to, but it wouldn't happen anyway.

“Oh, my gods. Kara.”

She frowned. “I'm sorry. I don't know—”

“Laura's heard enough to know all about you,” Commander Adama interrupted, and Kara found herself staring at the old man, wishing she had words. He wouldn't forgive her for this. She didn't forgive herself. “Between me and Lee, I think we told her just about everything there was to know. Zak helped, too, before he... died.”

She nodded, fighting against the bile rising in her throat and tears. “I swear, it was never supposed to be like this. I just...”

“No one would blame you for hiding after what Leoben did,” Laura told her, and Kara blinked, surprised by the sympathy. “If he hurt you anything like he hurt Kat or any of the others, even Lee, then your decision to run and stay hidden is perfectly understandable.”

“Not forgivable, not when others died because of it,” she countered. She put a hand to her head. “It's... I was a mess after I got free. He'd frakked up my knee and just about everything else, he'd tried to convince me we had a kid together... I was a wreck. I don't even know how I got to Helo. I just know Karl kept me safe, got me back to some kind of... sanity. It took so long to get back to something functional, but I was there and then...”

“Then he killed Kat.”

Kara nodded. She didn't want to get into how badly that had frakked her up—didn't want to talk about any of this _period_ —but she knew the commander. He would need answers. So would Lee.

“I knew no one was safe until Leoben was caught, so I tried to lure him out.”

The sheriff watched her, standing protectively close to Moretti as the paramedics started looking her over. “And then another woman died.”

Kara flinched. “She did. I don't know why he went after her even after I showed myself, but he just... it was all over before I could do a damned thing. I didn't know what else to do. If showing my face wasn't enough to draw him to me so I could end him or—so it would end—then I couldn't think of anything. It was Karl's brilliant plan to start following Lee.”

“Another woman still died,” the sheriff said, and she could only nod. “You have an explanation for that?”

“I was selfish,” Kara admitted. “I saved Lee instead of her.”

Some of the others swore. Kara didn't blame them. She still lived with that choice, had for years now. She had been weak. She knew that woman had suffered in her place and deserved better, but she could only get one of them out before the whole place went up, and she'd picked Lee. She would still pick Lee.

“Easy, Kara,” Helo said, touching her back like he always did when he knew she was getting defensive. “You weren't alone in that. I could have made another choice, same as you. I could have tried to get her out instead. I chose him, too.”

“My frakking fault. If I hadn't gotten hurt, we could have gotten both of them out.”

Helo shook his head. “We've been over this. We can't change what happened. Lee lived, and he got us here so it could finally end. He even found your long lost twin.”

She snorted. “I don't think we're actually related, Karl.”

“Gods help us if you are. The idea of there being two of you—no one could handle that, not even Lee, and he always had the best handle on you of anyone except maybe his dad.”

She smiled, though she couldn't bring herself to look at the commander.

“Come with me,” Adama said. “There's somewhere you need to be.”

“If you're planning on locking me up—”

“You really think that after all of this, Lee is going to bother waking up without you again? He stayed alive to stop that bastard and he thinks his mission is done. Well, it isn't, and you're going to prove it to him. You're going to give my son a reason to live, you hear me?”

“Bill,” Laura said, putting a hand on his arm. “That's hardly fair. It's not like—”

“No, I'll do it. I'll be there,” Kara said. “It's the least I can do for Lee.”

* * *

“How's the arm?”

“Better now that I've got drugs,” Vic said, giving Walt a tired smile. She wished she knew how to say half the things she needed or wanted to, but she didn't. “It's been a crazy couple of days, huh?”

“Yeah,” Walt agreed, pausing like he might say more but not actually doing it.

“I owe you some clean floors.”

“It's taken care of.”

She almost groaned. “Seriously, Walt? Soon as I go into the hospital, you go in and clean off the blood? That's what you did? Did they even officially release your house as a crime scene yet? Because I'm pretty sure there's jurisdiction issues for people to have pissing contests over.”

“It's done. No one really wants to fight over Conoy. They want him to disappear, they don't want the mess of Kara Thrace reappearing, and they don't want to deal with Adama, either.”

She swallowed. “Has he woken up?”

“Not yet.” Walt gave her a slight smile. “You're doing a hell of a lot better than he is.”

“Probably shouldn't be,” she said, leaning her head back against the pillows. “I saw Sean earlier.”

“He hasn't been released yet.”

“Neither have I. I just didn't want to wait. I needed to talk to him, set things straight, fix it if I could,” Vic said. She shook her head. “There's no fixing it. He doesn't want to see me. He blames me for this, and I... I don't blame him.”

“This isn't your fault. No one knew how much you looked like Thrace or that it would make you a target. Not until Adama showed up, and you said yourself he only found out a week ago. You said you believed it.”

“I told you all that?”

“You were drugged.”

She laughed. “I suppose I was. Still, it's not what I was hoping for. Not sure Sean and I would have lasted without all this, but I think we would have at least tried, and that should mean something, the trying.”

“You'd think.”

“I'm sorry. You don't want to hear this.”

Walt shrugged. “I'm not going anywhere.”

She smiled back at him. “No, I suppose you're not.”

* * *

Lee opened his eyes slowly, blinded by the light of the room. Everything was bright. White and obnoxious. He groaned, knowing where he was and where he didn't want to be, and what the hell was it with him surviving when he no longer wanted or needed to? He'd outlived Kara. Zak. Kat. Now Leoben, and for what?

For an empty life? He couldn't be an agent anymore, the doctors said, and he couldn't go back to the law because Leoben had ruined that for him, and he didn't know that he had a place anywhere anymore.

“I'm told the last time you were left alone with a woman who looked like me you managed to break out of the hospital and get caught by a serial killer so I'm under orders not to let that happen again.”

Lee swallowed, feeling sick. “You know, Moretti, this really isn't funny. And I don't know who told you which little tells of Kara to mimic, but stop. That's just—it frakking hurts and it's not funny.”

“Lee.”

He tensed. Gods, that sounded like her. It did. “Please don't do this. I can't—”

“Lee, it's me. I'm here,” she said, coming closer to the bed. “I... Gods, I'm so frakking sorry. I didn't... I thought leaving you would keep you safe, that if I stayed away, he wouldn't hurt you, and I was wrong. I frakked it up, like I do everything, and then I... I ended up using you to find him, to stop it once and for all. I thought it would be better after I put a bullet in his head, but I still feel... empty. I've been empty for ten years now, and I hate it.”

He watched her, wary. She said all the things that Kara would say, but he didn't know how he could accept that. “You died.”

“Lee—”

“There wasn't a body, so I tried to hold out hope, but don't you understand? He showed me pictures, even a frakking video. You were dead. And even if you weren't, you wouldn't have—oh, gods, you would have. You would have left me thinking you were dead for the rest of our lives—”

“No,” she said, reaching for him but he jerked away. “As soon as I was halfway back in my head I knew two things—one, I was going to kill Leoben. I had to. Two, I was going to find you as soon as I did and tell you everything. At first I was too messed up. It took Karl almost three years just to straighten me out. Then Kat died and he lost a lot of ground there. It wasn't until later that I started hunting Leoben back, and I was too late once, but I did... I did pull you out.”

Lee gagged. “No, I was hallucinating. You weren't there. Everyone said—”

“I was there,” she insisted, taking his hand despite his attempt to deny her it. “Gods, I really did frak this up. I frakked _you_ up. I never thought...”

“That it would hurt so much to see you and have you be another dream or illusion that I'd resist you telling me you were alive?”

“Yes.”

He sighed. He was losing that battle fast. She was all he'd wanted for ten years. To see her again, hear her laugh, see that grin of hers, the smile she seemed to only give him, and just to feel her there. “I missed you.”

“I swear I won't go away again,” she said, leaning close to him. “If... if that's what you want.”

“What I want? Kara, you have a husband. Sam's not dead.”

“And he would take me back in a heartbeat, just like Gianne took you back, but what I'd have for him... It would be guilt, and you always said that wasn't enough. I love him, but not the way I love you,” she admitted, and Lee just stared at her. She shrugged. “I've been dead. Leoben frakked me up good. Then you almost died. Again. I think I get a pass if I'm a little more vocal about how I feel than usual.”

He considered that. “Even in my dreams you didn't admit to... feelings.”

She grinned. “So you dream about me, Apollo?”

“Shut up, Starbuck.” He looked down at his hands. “No one's called me that in a long time.”

“Yeah, well, we are getting both of us back in the air,” she said. “That's one of the first things I plan on doing.”

“And the other things...?”

“Have to wait until your body can handle them,” she said with a grin that had him groaning.

* * *

“He seems... tentative,” Henry observed as he set a new round of drinks on the bar.

Laura nodded. “I agree, but he did try very hard to convince himself she was gone. It's not easy for him to go against it, even if it's everything he wants. He told me once it was a fine line between him and madness, and if he let the side of him that believed Kara was still out there win, he would be lost. I used to agree. Now I'm not so sure.”

Walt shook his head. “He had to do what needed to be done.”

Bill snorted. “I'm surprised you'd defend him. Can't say I'd be happy if he used my home for a trap like he did yours.”

Tigh laughed. “You kidding? You'd applaud his military strategy and tell him he deserved a frakking promotion if he'd done it on _Galactica.”_

“Hmm.” Bill's lips curved into a smile. “Maybe.”

“You know, I don't think I'll be getting any career advice tonight,” Cady said, nudging her father as she joined him at the bar. “Adams seems pretty busy.”

“I could make sure you were just as busy,” Branch offered, and she looked at him. Walt grimaced, but he didn't say anything.

“Come on, Apollo. Let's show these people how to dance.”

“Kara, I don't dance, you know that.”

“Actually, Captain,” Helo began, grinning. “I seem to remember that time we had leave on—”

“Not another word, Lieutenant,” Lee ordered, but the other voices overruled him.

“No, go on,” Vic said. “I think this is something we all need to hear.”

“Oh, it's a good one,” Kara agreed, and Lee groaned, muttering something about the two of them being the death of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was a part of me that was tempted to have something from Leoben at the end to say it wasn't over, but they deserve this almost happy ending, I think.


End file.
